WOMEN MOBILIZING MEMORY: Effective Activism for Human Rights
CSSD’s Women Mobilizing Memory working group met in late February to discuss, in a comparative perspective, the links between memory and activism and between memory practices and movements promoting human rights.
Examining current protest movements in the wake of the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street, members engaged in sustained debate about whether, and in what circumstances, such protests are useful in mobilizing people for sustained activist efforts at social transformation.
Among the aesthetic tools that might mobilize memory for progressive social change are the digital arts and photography, performance, and media, each of which can have strong ties to human rights law and academic examinations of inequality and the systematic erasure of memory.
The group suggested that while street protest was perhaps the most visible venue of mobilization, it was often overly romanticized and could not be sustained indefinitely. Still, the action of individuals coming together to claim a civil space has proved to be a useful tool for fomenting social and political transformation, as we saw in the frequent civil rights and peace protests of the 1960’s and the massive anti-war demonstrations at the beginning of this century.
One student activist spoke of the current difficulties of using public space on the Columbia campus for unionizing, where the rules of institutional decorum did not permit such activity, deeming it “confrontational.” Breaking the rules, however, is indeed what gets social movements noticed.
The group agreed that holding a public space indefinitely was not necessary to make a protest effective, so long as the innovative ideas being discussed continued to circulate after the physical protest ends. A street protest might ultimately be ephemeral, but as the 2011 Occupy Wall Street movement demonstrated, one action could lead to a series of related actions. As with Occupy, the communication of a sustained message (“99%”) can spark social connections to recycle the message and use it for new forms of protest.
Istanbul’s Saturday Mothers of Galatasaray Square are an example of sustained, networked protest with earlier roots. These activists have appeared since 1995 bearing photos of their children who were most likely murdered by government security forces. Their work was in turn inspired by the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires, women who since 1977 have mourned the disappearance of 30,000 individuals under Argentina’s dictatorship. Similar occurrences also take place in Mexico and Rwanda.
Similarly, many in the group claimed that the power of social media lies in the circulation of key phrases that act as an engine, generating an expanding desire for and a manifestation of change in the real world. Protesting the police murders of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and Eric Garner in Staten Island, New York this past year, activists throughout the country made phrases like #Ferguson, #icantbreathe, and #BlackLivesMatter go viral, leading to clashes with the police, freeway shutdowns, and other interventions. Risking arrest or violence was key in getting these events noticed.
While one member said that activism seems to have flatlined since 2011, since it lacked uniform goals and organization, another claimed, that on the contrary, many more students are now interested in course work around social change. It is important to remember that only a few years have passed since the events of the Arab Spring and Occupy, and that systemic social change requires much more time.
Contributed by Terry Roethlein, Communications Manager, Center for the Study of Social Difference
Image: Brittany Ferrell, Ashley Yates, and Alexis Templeton, Co-Founders of Millennial Activists United, an organization focused on outreach, policy campaign, civic engagement and direct action, in Ferguson, Missouri.
CSSD Announces Two New Working Groups for Fall 2015
In fall 2015, CSSD will convene two new working groups: Pacific Climate Circuits, which will apply lenses of race, class, gender and sexuality to current analyses of climate change in the Pacific Region, and The Legacy of Bandung Humanisms, which will examine the post-colonial developing world’s espousal of a radical brand of humanism and self-determination.
Convening in 2015, Pacific Climate Circuits will apply lenses of race, class, gender, sexuality, and inequality to the current analyses of climate change in the Pacific Region. The working group, directed by Paige West, Department Chair and Professor of Anthropology, Barnard College; Kevin Fellezs, Assistant Professor of Music and African American Studies, Columbia University; and J.C. Salyer, Adjunct Lecturer, Sociology, Barnard College, examines the specific political-economic systems culpable for climate change in the region, linking them to its histories of colonialism and neoliberalism. Researchers will seek solutions outside the typical hard sciences approach, instead drawing on scholarship in the arts, the humanities, and the social sciences to scrutinize the region, its environment, and its peoples.
The Legacy of Bandung Humanisms, also convening in the fall, is an interdisciplinary research project examining the workings of Bandung Humanisms, the progressive political, social, and cultural movement among nations of the Global South that refused to ally with either major power bloc during the Cold War. The working group, a collaboration between scholars at Columbia University and the University of California, Los Angeles uncovers the post-colonial developing world’s espousal of a radical brand of humanism and self-determination that gave rise to the Non-Aligned Movement of non-aggressor states.
A diverse group of scholars including Stathis Gourgouris, Director, Institute of Comparative Literature & Society and Professor, Classics, Columbia University; Aamir Mufti, Professor, Comparative Literature, UCLA; and Lydia Liu, Wun Tsun Tam Professor in the Humanities, Department of East Asian Languages, Columbia University, will trace the institutions, associations, writings, and artworks identified with the Bandung Humanisms movement, connecting them to current global struggles for social justice.
Banu Karaca in The New York Times
Banu Karaca, a member of CSSD working group Women Mobilizing Memory, was quoted in a recent New York Times article about creeping censorship amid the current flourishing of the arts in Turkey.
Karaca is a founder of Siyah Bant, an organization that monitors arts censorship in Turkey.
Read the New York Times article here.
CONFERENCE REPORT: 2014 Caribbean Digital Conference
The Digital Black Atlantic Project closed the fall of 2014 with an unprecedented event, its inaugural Caribbean Digital conference.
On December 4th and 5th, professors, artists, graduate students, activists and administrators explored the dimensions of digital expression and its implications on the Caribbean and its diaspora. Panelists from across the globe joined a conversation at Barnard College in person, on Skype, and via Livestream, sharing theories and cautionary tales about various approaches to building projects and creating community in an increasingly digital academic environment. With a focus on the Caribbean and its diaspora, the conference offered fertile ground for analyzing the intersection of information technologies with fields such as American studies, gender and sexuality studies, queer studies, black studies, ethnomusicology, and communications, among others.
The conference showcased radical approaches to the archive throughout its seven panels. Researchers and educators of color were a strong presence at Caribbean Digital, contributing in important ways to the breadth of topics that inform the critical discipline that is the digital humanities. The panel discussions were preceded by the Kamau Brathwaite researchathon held on Thursday morning and afternoon. This singular event—kicking off the ongoing the collaborative constitution of an open-access, online bibliography of work by and on Caribbean intellectual Brathwaite—generated over 500 bibliographic contributions in just six hours.
With the help of Twitter hashtag #sxcd2014 and the conference website, extensive social media activity gave enormous reach to the two-day event. Questions fielded from Twitter kept the conversations fresh and helped to archive what is planned to be the first of many conferences concerning archipelagic formations of digital networks and/in the Caribbean. David Scott, anthropology professor at Columbia and founder of the Small Axe print journal, closed the conference with a provocative reflection on the futures of publishing.
The event's primary organizers were Kaiama L. Glover, associate professor of French and Africana studies at Barnard, Kelly Baker Josephs, associate professor of English at York College, CUNY, and Alex Gil, digital scholarship coordinator and affiliate faculty in English and comparative studies at Columbia. Generously supported by the Center for the Study of Social Difference at Columbia, along with the Barnard Africana Studies Department and Barnard's Committee for Online and On-Campus Learning (COOL), the conference drew a sizeable audience from within the campus community in addition to drawing participants from around the tri-state area and, of course, cyberspace.
PUBLICATION: Yarimar Bonilla on "#Ferguson: Digital protest, hashtag ethnography, and the racial politics of social media in the United States"
Yarimar Bonilla of the Digital Black Atlantic Working Group and Jonathan Rosa have published "#Ferguson: Digital protest, hashtag ethnography, and the racial politics of social media in the United States" in the January 2015 issue of the American Ethnologist.
As thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of Ferguson, Missouri, to protest the fatal police shooting of unarmed African American teenager Michael Brown in the summer of 2014, news and commentary on the shooting, the protests, and the militarized response that followed circulated widely through social media networks. Through a theorization of hashtag usage, Bonilla and Rosa discuss how and why social media platforms have become powerful sites for documenting and challenging episodes of police brutality and the misrepresentation of racialized bodies in mainstream media. The piece demonstrates how engaging in “hashtag activism” can forge a shared political temporality, and, additionally, examines how social media platforms can provide strategic outlets for contesting and reimagining the materiality of racialized bodies. Their analysis combines approaches from linguistic anthropology and social movements research to investigate the semiotics of digital protest and to interrogate both the possibilities and the pitfalls of engaging in “hashtag ethnography.”
Read it here.
Lila Abu-Lughod's new book named "Best Book of 2014 on the Middle East"
Lila Abu-Lughod's Do Muslim Women Need Saving? (Harvard University Press) was named a "Best Book of 2014 on the Middle East" by Foreign Affairs.
Abu-Lughod is Co-director of the CSSD project Gender, Religion and Law in Muslim Societies.
Read John Waterbury's review here. Listen to Abu-Lughod discuss her work here.
Christian Lammert on "Welfare and Citizenship: The Pillars of Social Cohesion"
PUBLIC LECTURE:
Wednesday, November 5th, 5pm in 754 Schermerhorn Extension.
Christian Lammert, Professor for North American Politics at the John F. Kennedy Institute of the Free University of Berlin, will speak about the relationship between welfare and democracy—a question central to contemporary transatlantic debates surrounding capitalism, austerity, and inequality.
Over the course of the twentieth century in the United States and Europe, the social bargaining process we call welfare integrated capital and labor in ways that had a profound impact on political participation and legitimacy. Examining social policy and citizenship in a comparative framework, Christian Lammert, Professor for North American Politics at the John F. Kennedy Institute of the Free University of Berlin, will speak to the relationship between welfare and democracy—a question central to contemporary transatlantic debates surrounding capitalism, austerity, and inequality. Please join us in 754 Schermerhorn Extension on November 5th at 5PM for an enlightening lecture on this topic.
Wednesday, November 5, 2014 - 5:00pm
754 Schermerhorn Extension
CONFERENCE REPORT: Debating the “Woman Question” in the New Middle East: Women’s Rights, Citizenship, and Social Justice
In light of the recent events across the Arab region, the time is opportune for a careful examination of the new opportunities and challenges facing Arab women.
Debating the "Woman Question" in the New Middle East (Columbia Global Center, Amman) brought together scholars, academics, and practitioners to explore three broad themes: Political Economies and Women's Lives; Political and Legal Strategies for Citizenship and Social Justice; Islamic Feminism and Islamist Governance.
Read the full Conference Report here.
Women Leaders in Changing India
Anupama Rao, Women Creating Change project director for "Gender and the Global Slum" will participate in a discussion at the Four Seasons Hotel in Mumbai, featuring: Anjali Bansal ’97SIPA, Managing Director, Spencer Stuart, Sheela Patel, Director, Society for the Promotion of Area Resource Centers (SPARC), and Falguni Nayar P: ’12CC, Founder and CEO Nykaa.com. The panel will address the challenges and opportunities that face women in India's formal and informal economies.
The panel will be moderated by Vishakha Desai, Special Advisor for Global Affairs Columbia University, Professor of Professional Practice in the Faculty of International and Public Affairs.
Read more here.
CALL FOR PROJECTS: Women Creating Change
Women Creating Change (WCC) invites proposals for a new working group project that would begin in 2015. WCC will provide seed money of $45,000 over three years to working groups of scholars and practitioners whose projects are consistent with the mission of the Center (socialdifference.columbia.edu) and the specific goals of Women Creating Change (womencreatingchange.columbia.edu). Submission Deadline: Monday, March 2, 2015.
Call For Proposals
Women Creating Change (WCC) is a global research initiative of the Center for the Study of Social Difference, an advanced study center at Columbia University that supports scholarship on global issues of gender, race, ethnicity, and sexuality. WCC invites proposals for a new project that would begin in 2015. WCC will provide seed money of $45,000 over three years to working groups of scholars and practitioners whose projects are consistent with the mission of the Center (socialdifference.columbia.edu) and the specific goals of Women Creating Change (womencreatingchange.columbia.edu).
Women Creating Change
WCC engages distinguished feminist scholars from across Columbia to focus on contemporary global problems affecting women and on women’s roles in addressing those problems. It also engages with broader networks committed to raising awareness of these issues, on campus and beyond. The innovative research program and working group model of WCC draws on the scholarly depth and global perspectives that animate the Center for the Study of Social Difference and the Columbia Global Centers. However varied in topic and regional location, all WCC projects involve multiple partners, at Columbia and beyond. They focus on changing the terms in which significant global problems affecting women are being addressed.
Of necessity, the work of WCC is interdisciplinary as well as comparative and transnational. It seeks to build on the rich resources and global perspective afforded both by Columbia’s faculty and its expanding network of Global Centers, insisting on deep knowledge of the history, the languages, and the cultures of the regions with which we engage.
WCC has developed a unique working group structure of close intellectual collaboration and exchange over multi-year periods. WCC seed grants are intended to support the development of such working groups. Under the broad umbrella of WCC, individual working groups led by Columbia and Barnard faculty work on a particular problem or issue in collaboration with scholars, artists, activists and policymakers in specific regions of the world where Columbia’s Global Centers are located (currently, Beijing, Mumbai, Amman, Paris, Nairobi, Istanbul, Santiago, and Rio de Janeiro).
Project Proposals
Proposals may be submitted for consideration by any Columbia or Barnard faculty member(s) whose project aligns with the aims of CSSD and WCC, although preference will be given to faculty affiliated with one or more of CSSD’s five member centers and institutes. WCC seeks projects that are global and interdisciplinary in nature and favors proposals from an already-constituted core working group (typically 5-8 people) that closely links its work to one or more of Columbia’s Global Centers. (http://globalcenters.columbia.edu/). Each WCC working group should be composed of junior and senior scholars and practitioners from the U.S. and abroad, and should reach across multiple geographic regions, fields of study, specialization and expertise. For a list of current WCC projects, please see our website (womencreatingchange.columbia.edu).
WCC projects are expected to run for three years. Year 1 might concentrate on focused project development, including the constitution of an international working group that would convene exploratory seminars or workshops. Year 2 involves the most intensive intellectual work, featuring regular meetings of the working group and the active participation of international and regional fellows and affiliates, whether face-to-face or through videoconferencing using CSSD’s seminar room (752 Schermerhorn Extension). Fundraising efforts to develop and extend the project should begin early in Year 2. Year 3 is dedicated to post-project planning and dissemination of the project’s work through whatever means seem most appropriate to the working group. Examples might be conferences, the publication and/or translation of conference proceedings and/or edited collections of working group scholarship, or online publication of policy papers, curricular materials, or individual scholarship. Outside funding could support the continuation and development of the working group’s activities.
WCC project support budgets may be used by Project Directors at their discretion. However, budgets typically include the following: Course relief for a Project Director (one course per year for two years, alternating in the case of Project co-Directors); stipends for two graduate student participants and one graduate assistant responsible for program support; travel and accommodation for international workshops at Columbia’s Global Centers; support for visiting scholars or public conferences. Project Directors should be prepared to work with CSSD to seek additional funding sources.
We encourage prospective applicants to meet with WCC co-directors Jean Howard (jfh5@columbia.edu) and Marianne Hirsch (mh2349@columbia.edu) and/or WCC Associate Director Laura Ciolkowski (lec30@columbia.edu) early in the application process. Project proposals should not exceed five double-spaced pages and should include a project description, a provisional budget, a short CV for each tentative working group member, and a plan for group meetings, public events, and the dissemination of project research. Proposals should also describe a plan for soliciting and adjudicating applications for working group membership from the wider University community and beyond. Any anticipated curricular or pedagogical outcomes of the proposed project should be noted, although the absence of curricular components will not detract from the applications.
Proposals should be directed to Laura E. Ciolkowski, PhD, CSSD Associate Director (lec30@columbia.edu), by or before Monday, March 2, 2015.
Projects will be selected by the Executive Committee of the CSSD and applicants will be notified by March 30, 2015.
Nancy Kricorian Published in Guernica Magazine Daily
Nancy Kricorian's essay "Pilgrimage as/or Resistance," which was originally presented earlier this year at the Women Mobilizing Memory workshop at Depo in Istanbul, Turkey, has been published by Guernica.
Columbia Global Centers Showcases Women Mobilizing Memory
"Led by Professors Marianne Hirsh, Jean Howard, Diana Taylor and Ayşe Gül Altınay, the Mobilizing Memory for Action workshop engaged scholars, artists and activists from Chile, the United States and Turkey in public events, an art exhibition, a gender-memory walking tour and theater performances. "
Read more about the September 2014 Women Mobilizing Memory Istanbul workshop in this month's Columbia Global Centers E-Newsletter.
PUBLIC ROUNDTABLE: Women and Politics: A Turning Point?
Tuesday, September 23, 2014
Roone Arledge Cinema, Columbia
In 2012, women comprised an impressive majority of the electorate. Currently, women hold a majority of twenty seats in the Senate. More women than ever before are raising young children while serving at the Capitol. Moreover, it is likely not only that the U.S. will see a woman presidential candidate in 2016, but also that Republicans will again nominate a woman for their vice presidential seat. “Women and Politics: A Turning Point?,” the 2014 public program co-hosted by Women Creating Change, a global initiative of the Center for the Study of Social Difference, and the Columbia Alumni Association (CAA), explored these and other issues in a roundtable discussion, featuring: Manhattan Borough President Gale A. Brewer ‘97GS, NPR reporter Mara Liasson, and poet and Nation columnist Katha Pollitt ‘75SOA. Professor of Sociology and Gender Studies and Dean of Social Sciences Alondra Nelson moderated.
The speakers were in agreement that the 2012 election cycle could augur an exciting turning point for women in politics. According to Liasson, “This year, Republicans realized that they are behind the curve.” She noted the marked increase in Republicans who have been “coming out for over-the-counter birth control,” even though no drug company has ever appealed to the FDA for it. But, for Liasson the point is not whether Republicans’ current stance on birth control is realistic. Rather, in her view, “It is progress when Republicans are for over-the-counter birth control, because it means they’re moving farther to the center,” regardless of what their political motives may be.
Pollitt preferred to view Republicans’ new stance on birth control as part of a broader, less optimistic historical shift. She pointed out that making birth control available over-the-counter would actually delimit women’s access to reproductive rights—cutting benefits through Obamacare, such as free copays, and discouraging women from seeking a physician’s advice about the best medication.
Nelson broadened the conversation by noting that 2014 was a watershed year for women holding presidential seats in countries such as Chile and Liberia. She asked, what sort of promise do these leaders hold out for women’s political progress all over the world?
Both Brewer and Pollitt echoed the sentiment that simply having women leaders in positions of power is not enough. Brewer addressed the problem of the political pipeline and women’s access to power. On a pragmatic level, entering the pipeline—whether via work on a community board, a municipal district, holding office in a PTA or participating in other ways in the women’s movement—is the surest way for a woman to enter politics.
Pollitt interjected with a question that helped to focus the conversation: “Are we talking about women, or are we talking about feminists?” According to Pollitt, a neoconservative politician like Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) is a prime example of a woman leader who is not always working on behalf of women’s rights. Although Pollitt recognized the practical advantage of the pipeline that Brewer described, she pointed out that a lot of women leaders—such as Margaret Thatcher in the U.K., or perhaps even Hillary Clinton here in the U.S.— emerge from pipelines built on political dynasties rather than civic engagement.
As the conversation turned towards the possibility of Clinton running for the Democratic presidential seat in 2016, Pollitt remarked that Clinton might “dis-identify herself from women as a ‘special category,’ instead trying to position herself as ‘the President of everyone.’” Liasson suggested that the white, married women who voted for Mitt Romney in 2012—and whose vote Romney won against Obama by seven points—could very likely vote for Hillary. “I think that a lot of married women who voted for Mitt Romney will look in the mirror and see her looking back,” said Liasson. “I believe that the first woman President of the United States has to be old,” Liasson added. “There can’t be any question amongst voters about whether she’s qualified or has the necessary experience.”
Brewer agreed, adding that Clinton is also “unique.” According to Brewer, Clinton represents a woman leader who, even in her position as Secretary of State, tried to find nonviolent ways to “promote peace through art” around the world, using our own city’s collections at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
A very passionate audience brought a number of new issues to the table during a rousing Q&A. Perhaps the most provocative questions concerned the particular obstacles facing women of color with political aspirations and the problems that partisanship raises, which one audience member implied could be seen in the all-Democratic composition of the panel itself. To the women-of-color question, Brewer ardently advocated for campaign finance reform at all levels, pointing out how hobbling socioeconomic disadvantage is for women of color in electoral politics.
“The good news is that the rising American electorate are young and minority,” Liasson. If we are indeed on the brink of a turning point in electoral politics, as these speakers’ hopeful words predict, then it seems we can count on witnessing more diversity and younger voices in the near future—even if an end to fractious partisanship is not yet in view.
Nicole Gervasio is a Ph.D. student in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University.
DAY FIVE REPORT: "Women Mobilizing Memory" Workshop in Istanbul, Turkey
During the penultimate day of the week-long Women Mobilizing Memory workshop, a number of new research questions and concerns emerged, including the following: As women (and sometimes men) mobilizing memory, how do we deploy feminist scholarship, and what does feminism mean to each of us across our diverse cultural, linguistic, and educational contexts?
The working group panels for the day explored this question from a number of different angles. In a talk titled, “Coups d’État: Dialogues at the Intersection of Memory and Life Story in Chile and Turkey,” Marcial Godoy and Zeynep Gambetti staged their feminist methodology in the form of a collaborative dialogue. Their conversation reflected on the ways in which their separate trajectories as activist-scholars growing up in eras of gross political oppression have converged in a transnational, professional friendship built on solidarity.
The need for concrete collaboration between scholars as an explicitly feminist methodology has come up in discussions time and again. Andrea Crow and Alyssa Greene took a different approach to contending with the issue of collaboration in their own conversation on “Working Definitions: Activist Scholarship in a Transnational University.” Their dialogue asked us not only to strive to define our critical terms in order to improve our communication as feminist colleagues, but also to remain aware of our role in the university system at large, especially as university structures become more global and corporatized.
In many ways, the following panel on “Reversing Silences/Telling Forgotten Stories” made manifest many concrete, feminist issues in Turkey that had been in the background of many of the group's explorations of Turkish politics earlier in the conference. Bürge Abiral gave a talk about sexual violence in women’s narratives of incarceration during Turkey’s military junta from 1980-1983. She provided important context for the difference regarding the "speakability" of sexual violence in Turkey, where rape was, until recently, defined as a crime against public morality and order, not against women’s bodily autonomy and human rights.
Dilara Çalışkan continued thinking about sexual violence specifically in transwomen’s communities and queer kinship structures in Istanbul, asking a provocative question based on Professor Hirsch’s scholarship: “Can we speak of queer postmemory?” She analyzed the ways in which trans mothers and daughters not only queer intergenerational transmission in their families of choice, but also hand down unfathomable memories of torture and forced displacement.
In the final talk of the day, Soledad Falabella shared her activist work on archiving and making accessible poetry from Mapuche women, an indigenous group that faces tremendous hostility on a daily basis in Chile. Falabella described the positionality of Mapuche women as “unbearable beings” for the state, always in conflict with the extent to which “the whole societal imaginary is trying to erase you,” and yet, in simply surviving, you become a concrete “standard of testimony” for the political problem more broadly.
Before separating into smaller breakout groups for the last time, the group participated in an impromptu discussion about positionalities as feminist scholars pursuing questions of social difference. Diana Taylor started the discussion by asking, “If we’re talking about gender, does our work automatically focus on women? Or are we using a feminist analysis to look at whatever we’re looking at?” A number of cross-cultural insights on feminism rose to the surface, including recognition of the potential that feminism has to provide an ethical lens for thinking about oppression, vulnerability, and a critique of power that does not lose sight of local contexts.
The final event of the day returned to the Black Box Theatre, where Maria Jose Contreras put on a one-woman piece of experimental performance art titled Prosthesis. Contreras' performance embodied a tension that had been remarked upon throughout the day: the ethical imperative that the personal remain political in our work as feminists. Her performance juxtaposed televised images of incendiary political moments from her childhood in Chile with x-rays of her debilitated father’s internal organs and a working breast-pump, making a visually stunning commentary on the ways in which her milk as a new mother also carries with it residues of Chile’s past.
Day five report contributed by: Nicole Gervasio
Nicole Gervasio is a Ph.D. student in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University.
DAY FOUR REPORT: "Women Mobilizing Memory" Workshop in Istanbul, Turkey
The fourth day of Women Mobilizing Memory featured a roundtable discussion moderated by Ayşe Gül Altınay on documentary films about state violence and Kurdish memory. The directors of the films Bûka Baranê (2013, dir Dilek Gökçin) and Dersim’s Lost Girls (2010, dir. Nezahat Gündoğan) also joined the discussion. Bûka Baranê focuses on the experiences of people who were students at an elementary school in Hakkari to explore the different forms of state violence and the Kurdish guerilla movement in the 1990s. In light of their memories of violence during the period of emergency rule, the film reflects on how children longed for peace.
Based on interviews with elderly women who experienced the Dersim genocide, Dersim’s Lost Girls explores how children and women have been affected by ethnic violence and assimilationist policies that targeted the Kurdish population in Dersim in the late 1930s. The discussion was followed by the roundtable Gendered Memories of War and Genocide in Turkey, moderated by Meltem Ahıska. Zeynep Türkyılmaz presented her research on the genocide in Dersim, its gendered aspects, and the tensions between memory and the archive as they relate to people's memories of the genocide. Ayşe Gül Altınay explored Nebahat Akkoç's organization KAMER to discuss post-nationalist feminist memory work within the broader context of Turkish politics. Hülya Adak’s presentation explored a variety of examples in late Ottoman and Turkish history to discuss how the position of “the mourning mother” has been utilized by authors and activists for different and at times conflicting political projects, especially with regard to the Armenian-Turkish relations and the memory of the genocide. Pınar Ensari discussed her research on young Kurdish women, their memories of state violence in the Southeast of Turkey in the 1990s, and their engagement with activism and politics in Turkey, with a specific focus on the Gezi Resistance and its aftermath.
After the roundtable, we joined the Gender-Memory Walking Tour co-organized by the Sabancı University Gender and Women's Studies Forum and the Karakutu/Black Box group. That evening, we attended Disco Number 5, a solo performance by Mirza Metin in Kurdish and directed by Berfin Zenderlioğlu. The performance focused on torture at the Diyarbakır prison during the military regime in the aftermath of the coup d’état of 1980. Reflecting the transdisciplinary nature of the program, the events throughout the day demonstrated the different forms of memory work.
Day four report contributed by: Rustem Ertug Altinay
Rustem Ertug Altinay is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Performance Studies at New York University and a Turkish Cultural Foundation fellow.
DAY THREE REPORT: "Women Mobilizing Memory" Workshop in Istanbul, Turkey
The third day of Women Mobilizing Memory was dedicated to three public roundtables with simultaneous translations at Depo: "Creating Alternative Archives," "Art, Performance and Memory." and "Gender, Memory, Activism."
In the first roundtable on “Creating Alternative Archives,” Leyla Neyzi introduced her recent project on Kurdish and Turkish youth living in Turkey and Germany with visual examples from the project's website. Neyzi especially focused on intergenerational memory, post-memory, and Kurdish and Turkish youth's different conceptions of time and history. Özlem Kaya began her talk by introducing the Truth Justice Memory Center, which is an independent human rights organization that is based in İstanbul. Kaya explained how the Center contributes to uncovering grave human rights violations at times of conflict and in strengthening the collective memory about those violations. Currently, the Center is trying to create an alternative archive through video testimonies about enforced disappearances in Turkey. Susan Meiselas discussed her web-based project akaKurdistan, which she founded in 1998. She explored the possibilities of creating visual histories and building memories with people who have no national archive. She focused on how multiple perspectives and hidden archives came together in the production of this collective archive of Kurdish memory. Silvina der Meguerditchian noted how her artistic works deal with issues related to the burden of national identity, memory, the role of minorities in the society and the potential of a space “in between.” The roundtable was followed by a screening of Silvina’s new film “Nereye/Where to,” which follows the traces of İstanbul’s lost minority communities in Fener and Balat, revealing the complexities of recovering memory.
In the second roundtable, titled “Art, Performance and Memory,” Andreas Huyssen discussed the recent changes in museum culture, pointing to a "metamorphosis of the museum." Huyssen explored how the museum has been transformed from a site of memory as an “exhibitionary complex” to a mass medium as an “experiential complex.” Alissa Solomon drew attention to the current wave of museum building across the world as one of the emerging global tropes of memorialization. She asked various challenging questions and explored the answers through one type of global trope: the shoe. By looking at piles of shoes, seen in memorials and protests among other places, Solomon asked whether we can represent the scale of mass atrocities without blurring over individual differences. Carol Becker talked about Kara Walker’s new site-specific sculptural installation at the now defunct Domino Sugar Factory. Becker argued that the sculpture echoes the memory of slavery by focusing on how Black women were exploited in the history of the sugar industry that dominated the Caribbean and the American South for a century. Becker explored how reactions to this sculpture are indicative of the growing insensitivity of the United States to the subject of race and racism. Diana Taylor noted Regina Galindo’s piece Earth, which depicts the trial of ex-dictator Rios Montt. Taylor discussed the political efficacy of testimony in Galindo’s performance art on genocide. In her talk, Maria José Contreras focused on forgetfulness and its relation to memory in the performative dimension. Contreras asked whether we can think of forgetfulness for embodied memories. Furthermore, she traced the capacity of prosthesis in performance art to recuperate memories and evade forgetfulness.
The third and the final roundtable, “Gender, Memory, Activism” started with Marita Sturken who explored how architectures of memory, architectures of torture and architectures of conflict are shadowed by a culture of comfort and sentiment. Sturken asked whether we can think of modern architecture as an infrastructure for framing space and memory. In her talk, Marianne Hirsch discussed the works of several artists who activate small, fragmentary archives and allow them to travel and migrate, creating networks of connectivity that challenge the monumentalization of memory and resist national paradigms that erase difference. Nükhet Sirman noted the Women's Initiative for Peace, which is a group of approximately 500 women, all dedicated to forging a peace between the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) and the Turkish State. Sirman explained how they, as a group, appointed themselves to bear witness to the atrocities that were committed against Kurds in the 1990s, especially the gendered crimes. Meltem Ahıska drew attention to how Saturday Mothers of Turkey made the enforced disappearances visible by a counter-movement. Ahiska argued that this counter-movement has played a significant role not only in creating a new space for politics, but also by enacting political memory. Saturday Mothers has infused spaces with memory since 1995 through their silent sit-ins. Nancy Kricorian concluded the panel by remembering Armenian history on a pilgrimage through her grandfather’s hometown in Turkey.
Day three report contributed by: Pinar Ensari
Pinar Ensari is an alumna of Sabanci University's Department of Cultural Studies.
DAY TWO REPORT: "Women Mobilizing Memory" Workshop in Istanbul, Turkey
Media, Memory, Political Efficacy
On Day Two of theWomen Mobilizing Memory workshop, Jean Howard introduced the following keywords for discussion: gender; embodiment; accompaniment (or “walking with”); politics; repair; mobilizing; hope; optimism; and play, or the recovery of joy. Ayşe Gül Altınay added feminism as a keyword and Milena Grass also expanded on Jean’s notion of accompaniment by stressing the idea of connection rather than comparison. Andrea Crow focused on the concept of connection as an important component of our work, pointing to our collective presence as evidence of the value of direct encounter.
Twin panels were also convened on Media, Memory, and Political Efficacy. The panels explored a variety of themes, including: the personal archive; trauma and scholarship; the performative; and expanding notions of absence and representation. Taking as his point of departure photographs of his family and community, Leo Spitzer raised the possibility of a critical nostalgia among refugees. Milena Grass’ paper on Macarena Aguiló’s documentary work analyzed the legacy of Chilean leftist exiles and their descendants. Sibel Irzık’s paper picked up on the difficulties of sharing in trauma in the Turkish context of post-coup coup d’état novels, and the metafictional strategies that writers use to show language as a site of struggle against authority. In her work on the emergent aesthetics of disappearance, Nicole Gervasio proposed an expanded use of the term “forced disappearance” to include experiences such as political detention.
The second panel’s papers included a wider range of texts and explored a variety of affective possibilities. Embodiment as a critical term ran through the work all three panelists. Jean Howard discussed temporality and "slow violence" in the context of Carol Churchill’s theater, bringing together themes about the personal and the environmental as well as labor and bodily vulnerability. Henry Castillo’s work on the lumbalú, a customary dance of death in Colombia, was also discussed in the context of the gendered performance of lamentation, mourning, and sexuality. Rüstem Ertuğ Altınay added to the discussion by theorizing the intersections of the nationalist/political with the sexual.
Day 2 Report contributed by: Alyssa Greene
Alyssa Greene is a graduate student in the Department of Germanic Languages at Columbia University.
DAY ONE REPORT: "Women Mobilizing Memory" Workshop in Istanbul, Turkey
Jean Howard, Ayşe Gül Altınay, Milena Grass, and Andrea Crow participated in the opening panel of Women Mobilizing Memory, a working group that explores women's acts of witness and the gendered forms and consequences of political repression and persecution.
Women Mobilizing Memory is one of four working groups that, together, make up the "Women Creating Change" initiative of CSSD. The first-day conversation of the working group revolved around a range of themes, including: the academic/practitioner divide; the political efficacy of academic, artistic, and activist productions; the relationship between memory, history, and archives; the ethical repercussions of witnessing; as well as the intricate link between the personal and the political.
The working group visited the Depo Gallery to attend Ayşe Gül Altınay's and Işın Önol's “Mobilizing Memory: Women Witnessing” exhibit. After the curators were introduced, Banu Karaca discussed the politics of memory as reflected in Turkey's contemporary art and Işın Önol related the exhibit to the country's recent history. Artists who took part in the exhibit included: Silvina Der-Meguerditchian, Susan Meiselas, Nar Photos (Serra Akcan, Fatma Çelik, Gülşin Ketenci, Aylin Kızıl, Serpil Polat), Truth Justice Memory Center (represented by Özlem Kaya), Aylin Tekiner, Emine Gözde Sevim, Lorie Novak, and Gülçin Aksoy.
Day 1 Report contributed by: Bürge Abiral and Dilara Çalışkan
Bürge Abiral is a Masters student in Cultural Studies at Sabancı University. Dilara Çalışkan received her M.A. in Cultural Studies at Sabanci University in 2014.
PUBLIC ROUNDTABLES: “Coming to Terms” with Gendered Memories of Genocide, War, and Political Repression," Istanbul, Turkey
Public Roundtables with Turkish simultaneous translations
September 17, 2014, 1:00-7:00pm
DEPO Gallery, ISTANBUL, TURKEY
Roundtable topics and speakers:
Creating Alternative Archives, with Leyla Neyzi, Özlem Kaya, Susan Meiselas, Silvina der Meguerditchian, and Şemsa Özar
Art, Performance and Memory, with Andreas Huyssen, Alisa Solomon, Carol Becker, Diana Taylor, Maria José Contreras, and Ayşe Öncü
Gender, Memory, Activism, with Marita Sturken, Marianne Hirsch, Nükhet Sirman, Meltem Ahıska, Nancy Kricorian, and Yeşim Arat
Schedule
1:00pm-2:30pm - Creating Alternative Archives
Moderator: Şemsa Özar (Boğaziçi University and Diyarbakır Institute for Social and Political Research)
Leyla Neyzi (Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Sabancı University) - “Young people Speak Out: The Contribution of Oral History to Facing the Past, Reconciliation and Democratization in Turkey” Project www.gencleranlatiyor.org
Özlem Kaya (Truth Justice Memory Center, Turkey) Creating an Alternative Archive through Video Testimonies
Susan Meiselas (Photographer, Magnum Photos, USA ) – Kurdistan
Silvina Der Meguerditchian (Artist, Argentina/Germany) – Nereye? / Where to?
3:00pm-4:30pm - Art, Performance and Memory
Moderator: Ayşe Öncü (Sociology, Sabancı University, Turkey)
Andreas Huyssen (German and Comparative Literature, Columbia University, USA) - The Metamorphosis of the Museum: From Exhibitionary to Experiential Complex
Alisa Solomon (School of Journalism, Columbia University, USA) - Shoe Fetish
Carol Becker (School of the Arts, Columbia University, USA) - The Memory of Sugar
Diana Taylor (Performance Studies, Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, NYU, USA) - Is Performing Testimony, Testimony?
Maria José Contreras (School of Theatre, Catholic University, Chile) – The (Im)possible Performance of Forgetfulness
5:00pm-6:30pm - Gender, Memory, Activism
Moderator: Yeşim Arat (Political Science and International Relations, Boğaziçi University, Turkey)
Marita Sturken (Media, Culture, and Communication, NYU, USA) - Architectures of Memory, Architectures of Torture, Architectures of Conflict
Marianne Hirsch (Gender Studies and Comparative Literature, Columbia University, USA) – Mobile Memories
Nükhet Sirman (Sociology, Boğaziçi University, Turkey) – How to Gender Memories of Violence?
Meltem Ahıska (Sociology, Boğaziçi University, Turkey) - Counter-movement, space, and politics: How the Saturday Mothers of Turkey make the enforced disappearances visible
Nancy Kricorian (Author and Activist USA) - Place Names and Objects: Pilgrimage as/or Resistance
About
This series of roundtables occurs in the context of a five-day workshop on “Mobilizing Memory for Action” that brings together an international group of scholars, artists, and activists to analyze the activist work memory practices can enable. The workshop is part of Columbia University’s “Women Creating Change” initiative led by the Center for the Study of Social Difference and organized in collaboration with the Columbia Global Centers. “Mobilizing Memory for Action” began in December 2013 with a workshop at the Columbia Global Centers in Chile and continues in September 2014 with activities in Istanbul hosted by Columbia Global Centers | Turkey, Sabancı University Gender and Women’s Studies Forum and DEPO Istanbul. Support has also been provided by the Blinken European Institute, Sabancı University, Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, the Truth Justice Memory Center and Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Turkey Office. The Istanbul program consists of a workshop with 35 leading scholars, artists and activists from Turkey, the United States, Chile and other contexts; an art exhibition and catalogue; documentary screenings; theater performances and post-performance discussions; and a series of public roundtables.
For more information about the exhibit, please click here.
WORKSHOP: Shifting Notions of Social Citizenship: The “Two Wests”
What is the welfare state? What happens when it disintegrates? What is the future of the family in light of its historical transformation?
Scholars and graduate students from research universities in the United States, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway convened to answer these questions during the Shifting Notions of Social Citizenship: The “Two Wests” workshop, held June 11-13, 2014 at the Columbia Global Center | Paris.
What constitutes a welfare state?
Maurizio Vaudagna chaired the opening session with welcoming addresses delivered by Brunhilde Biebuyck (Columbia Global Centers|Paris), Marc Lazar (Institut d’Études Politiques), and Raffaella Baritono (University of Bologna-CISPEA). Alice Kessler-Harris presented introductory remarks that asked participants to answer the elementary question, “What constitutes a welfare state?” Kessler-Harris showed how setting conceptual limits around the welfare state are made difficult by the variety of its present-day obligations.
Papers in the first session took up the definitional challenge by thinking about the concepts that undergird the intellectual production of the welfare state in the European Union and in comparative context between the United States and Sweden. Vincent Michelot (SciencesPo Lyon) chaired presentations by Maurizio Ferrera (University of Milan), Ann Shola Orloff (Northwestern University), and a research group that conducted a longue durée analysis of the welfare state in France and the United Kingdom, rooting the welfare state’s earliest beginnings in the 17th century and well before industrial capitalism supplanted mercantilism. Ferrera outlined the intellectual and political roots of the European Union idea, suggesting that a “neo-Weberian” typology offered solutions to the intractable differences between ideas about national sovereignty and the EU’s political and economic superstructure. Orloff examined “gendered policy formation” and rebutted arguments that the state simply reinforced paternalism as too simplistic. Orloff’s analysis challenged participants to think about how historically changing definitions of gender changed social policy and vice-versa.
What happens when safety nets go?
Day two opened with the question, “What happens when safety nets go?” Donna Kesselman (University Paris Est Créteil) chaired presentations by Christian Lammert (Free University of Berlin), Beatrix Hoffman (Northern Illinois University), and Sébastien Chauvin (University of Amsterdam). Lammert argued that in the process of re-commodification, the visibility of the welfare state’s provision in people’s lives diminishes, which undermines public support for these programs. The results are pernicious for democracy because as people are forced back into the labor market and forced to accept a shrinking safety net, their level of political participation also declines. Hoffman dug into the problem of healthcare in the welfare state by comparing citizen participation for health reform in Spain and the United States. Hoffman showed how Spain’s generous healthcare provision has failed to embrace the healthcare needs of a growing number of immigrations and how the United States has become increasingly less responsive to the demands of civil rights organizations, especially after hospital closures zipped through urban neighborhoods during the 1970s and 1980s. Chauvin answered the question from the perspective of precarious labor and the growing exploitation of contingent—not temporary—workers. Through participant-observation in two contingent work dispatch centers in Chicago, Chauvin asserted that the idea of “temp work” is a fiction because precarious workers often develop long-term relationships with a small number of employers.
The Future of the Family
The next session envisioned the future of the family. Mario Del Pero (Institut d’Études Politiques) chaired presentations by Chiara Saraceno (University of Turin), Robert O. Self (Brown University), and Laura Lee Downs (European University Institute, Florence). Saraceno argued that the EU forces a plural acknowledgement of different family forms and that family and family policy are not one and the same. Civil regulation regarding the family contains variety, but remain attuned to traditional conceptions of the family. Self argued that the push for the reconstruction of the welfare state after the 1960s came mostly from the center left, rather than reactionary forces. The extent of social solidarity from the New Deal had been exaggerated, while the myth of the breadwinner was a social idea before it ever became an economic reality. Downs pondered the future of social protection in France by looking at the history of its colonies de vacances, holiday camps that were established for working-class children throughout the country. The extent of centralization in France meant that the diversity of political and ideological groups that participated in the state was far-reaching. At the same time, Downs shows how fiscal pressures during the 1970s and 1980s, demonstrating just how reliant all groups were on a state committed to financing social activities and opportunities to build national solidarity and to develop equality among young adults.
Possibilities of Resistance and Solutions
The last session, held on the last day of the workshop, thought about possibilities of resistance and solutions to the present-day impasses and challenges to the welfare state. Olivier Giraud (CNAM) chaired presentations by Gro Hagerman (University of Oslo), Birte Siim (Aarlborg University), Marissa Chappell (Oregon State University), and Neil Gilbert (University of California-Berkeley). Hagerman questioned whether the Norwegian and Swedish welfare states could “have it all,” arguing that the fiscal basis of both welfare states is premised on their status as resource-rich states. Siim asserted that democracy and citizenship needed articulation outside of the nation-state framework and that the rise of right-wing populism was more than just racism and constituted a serious critique about the distributional objectives of the state. Chappell’s archival research found that the Civil Rights Movement galvanized movements for greater economic citizenship among poor people; however, gender bias and racism prevented the formation of alliances. Gilbert traced how the U.S. welfare state transformed from a system of entitlement to one increasingly checked by means testing and conditionality.
The workshop concluded with Vaudagna and Kessler-Harris synthesizing the wide-ranging contributions of the speakers and the dialogic exchange that occurred between sessions. All participants left with a greater sense of the enormity of the welfare state as an object of study and the importance of comparative analysis between countries and even supranational structures of governance. The work of thinking about the welfare state in historical, social and political perspective continues.
The Columbia University Blinken European Institute and the Interuniversity Center for European-American History and Politics convened the international workshop with the support of the Center for the Study of Social Difference, Columbia University’s Department of History, and the University of Eastern Piedmont’s Department of Human Studies.
George Aumoithe
PhD student in History at Columbia University | Graduate Fellow, Social Justice After the Welfare State Project at Columbia’s Center for the Study of Social Difference