GENDER (and) REVOLUTIONS

This blog is a repository of thoughts (original and stumbled upon) and thought provoking material on the following topics - identity, feminism, international politics, social justice, Central Europe, Eastern Europe, communism, revolutions, Czech culture ... and other topics that prompt us to think about where the world has been and where it is going.

[guatepolitics]

Mexico City is a giant laboratory of urban morphology. Its 20 million residents live in neighborhoods based on a wide spectrum of plans. Here are some examples… Geometric plans dominate throughout Mexico City. The Federal neighborhood (above) evokes the radiating...

[nprfreshair]

“A long-lived relationship is about so many things. It is such a dense and complex process — always a process — and it’s not to be summed up. It’s not to be turned into some kind of vignette. If we are serious, we also have to recognize that even the longest and richest and densest relationship must end, and we see it around us. We see it in that inevitability of time’s power, if you will.”

Adrienne Rich, on relationships [the complete 1989 Fresh Air interview] (via nprfreshair)

[observando]

[verster-blog]

that.

[fka-feminish]

The first act of violence that patriarchy demands of males is not violence toward women. Instead patriarchy demands of all males that they engage in acts of psychic self-mutilation, that they kill off the emotional parts of themselves. If an individual is not successful in emotionally crippling himself, he can count on patriarchal men to enact rituals of power that will assault his self-esteem.

Bell Hooks (via feminishblog)

[twelve-shades-of-grey]

Posters for the Human Rights film festival in Prague. The paint symbolizes the medium of speaking out against repressive government. 

[versosdeliberacion]

[thinkmexican]

Banned Books: Read With Caution, May Cause Independent Thinking

A photo from Sean Arce, former director of Tucson’s Mexican American Studies program.

Credit: Precious Knowledge

via versosdeliberacion

[literalab]

Notes from underground: a look back at Czech samizdat

Czech dissident publications are put on display in New York, helping to bring a dark, courageous chapter of modern history back to life

Since the death of Václav Havel on Sunday, Czech television has been filled with scenes from the ‘60s through the ‘80s documenting the dissident movement the former president and playwright played such a prominent role in. At the Czech Center in New York City, a spotlight is shining on that same era of history in the exhibition Samizdat: The Czech Art of Resistance, 1968–1989.

Read the full article at Czech Position

Photo - The cover for a 1987 edition of A Slightly Different Biography by Bohumil Hrabal, VME, courtesy of Samizdat: The Czech Art of Resistance, 1968–1989

[070991]

[verster-blog]

squee-gee:

Shoko Tendo, daughter of a yakuza boss, depicts her chaotic life of drug-addiction, miscarriage, deaths, poverty and psychological & sexual abuse through her heart-breaking memoir. She is known as the first Japanese female ever to break the code of silence and speak about life for women in the underworld.

I need to get my hands on this book.

[verster-blog]

Banned ideas coming to life in a new kind of samizdat

[verster-blog]

Documentary Theater: Two in Your House

Although never performed in Belarus itself, this play has been traveling throughout mostly post-communist Europe in order to raise awareness about home imprisonment of Belarusian activists. The play not only addresses a widely overlooked human rights issue, it draws on ethnographic interviews and research in order to use theater as a form of news reporting. 

The play can be seen at Divadlo Archa (Prague) this Sunday and Monday. It will be performed in Russian with English & Czech subtitles. 

Here is some more information.

"Two in Your House" is an international co-production speaking about the events that took place in Belarus. On focus is Vladimir Neklyaev, poet and politic activist, who is mostly known in the world through what happened in Belarus before and after presidential election in 2010 and 2011.  Documental project "Two in your house" is an attempt to bring onto the stage, events that happened in Neklyaev's 4-room apartment where he lived with his wife and 2 KGB agents house arrested 24/7 for months.  What does it mean to be a prisoner in you own home? How does it feel to exist in your own home, your private room that you have built for your closest people, together with two strangers? What does one feel if his space is restricted? How will it change your relationship with your wife if it is all the time carefully watched by two security persons? How does it change a daily routine of the family? What happens to a family, if it has no private space?  Teatr.doc is an independent theatre from Moscow that was initiated by younger generation of playwrights and dramaturges in 2001. Their method of writing is verbatim - a method where writing plays is based on documents and interviews with an intention to create socially important theatre that speaks on actual subjects. Themes, that based on Teatr.doc are inviting and requesting artistic investigation.

[verster-blog]

[verster-blog]

Most of all I remember the three of them operating during that time as if they were a single person, sharing a single meal, a single body, a single silence, and a single fear.

Jhumpa Lahiri

[verster-blog]

Recently, NPR put out an amazing story about Homai Vyarawalla. It's important to be aware of those who capture, record, and document social movements. Those names are all too often, invisible and forgotten. 

In a career that spanned more than four decades, Vyarawalla stood, often the lone female photographer, on the front lines of a tumultuous transition from colonial rule to independence. Draped in a sari and lugging heavy photographic equipment, she photographed in an era when the media had unprecedented access and an ongoing camaraderie. "All of us helped each other," she said of her male counterparts. "If someone was changing film, he would request another photographer to take an extra picture for him. We even traded negatives so that no one missed out on a good picture."

[verster-blog]

The Unbearable and Relentless Pain of "Old News"

In the Unbearable Lightness of Being, Kundera describes a scenario where a Czech photographer/journalist emigrates to Switzerland to escape totalitarianism at home. The journalists photos of the occupation are cursed. They have worth only in so far as the Western public pays attention. He then mentions that the photographs and other knowledge about what was going on the ground did not attract the attention of the editors. Instead they commissioned pictures of cacti and DIY ideas for housing. The Soviet Occupation was old news. 

Westerners (and perhaps this is a human trait in general) are like flies in this regard. They can pay attention a day, maybe two. The really dedicated ones a week. But after that, the memory of happens is strangely conserved and put onto a metaphorical shelf. The struggle on the ground persists, but the audience won't hear it. There's nothing "new" nothing "exciting" (read: a type of violence or misery we have not yet grown de-sensitized to). Today, I'd like to make a plea for us to share more news on struggles on the ground, keep ourselves in the loop and highlight struggles that don't attract the front page of the New York Times. 

Today, I'd like to draw everybody's attention to voices that often get ignored in international news. BELARUS. Belarus is currently facing a major human rights crisis, yet earns no airtime, and occupies few lines in major newspapers. 

View the US election in context to struggles for freedom worldwide. When I had the chance to speak to a few Occupiers from the Occupy Together movement, I was astonished by the parallels between the US and different parts of Europe. People were asking key questions "What is the purpose of a democracy? How do we make decisions together?" Those questions are similar to those asked in 1989 across the Eastern block, and those questions are still being posed in Belarus. Please, read this article today. Educate yourself on the issue. 

[dial4]

My father’s old elementary school and inside one of the empty classrooms. In the second photo, he is standing with his teacher who taught him at this school. On the walls, the tattered posters of the great communist leaders of yesteryear still hang in a nostalgic, unsettling kind of way. 

Shuiquanzi, Liaoning province, summer 2010. 

[dearscarlet-blog]

Dear Scarlet,  You wanted a mohawk. We let you get one. It’s as simple as that, and it should be. 

[verster-blog]

Children against the gender binary!

[rferl]

The Debate That Won’t Die: Havel And Kundera On Whether Protest Is Worthwhile

  Until his death on December 18, Vaclav Havel was one of the two most famous living Czech writers in the world. The other is Milan Kundera, now 82 and living in France.

They made for a fascinating duo: Kundera was born into a middle-class family in Moravia, Havel was born into a wealthy family in Bohemia; Kundera was a loyal Communist in his youth, Havel never joined the party; Kundera’s fiction tends to be pessimistic about human nature, whereas Havel’s essays inspired people with their optimism; and while Kundera left Czechoslovakia in 1975 and achieved fame and fortune as a novelist based in Paris, Havel stayed in his native land to live the arduous life of a dissident, either in prison or under constant surveillance by the secret police…[READ MORE]