3rd Global Conference
Wednesday 29th November - Saturday
2nd December 2006
Pugetow Palace, Cracow, Poland
Session 6b: Ambiguities Revealed
Chair: Adam Kaasa
The Symbolic Violence of ‘Protecting’ Women From Sexual
Abuse
Karen
Morgan
Department of Sociology,
University of Bristol,
Bristol,
United Kingdom
In the UK, there is a plethora of literature disseminated
by state voluntary agencies, aimed at advising women on how to avoid
sexual violence. This literature, compounded by print media coverage
of the sexual abuse of women, overwhelmingly implies that it is the
responsibility of the woman to avoid potentially violent situations.
This paper therefore draws on women’s safety advice literature
and on newspaper reports of sexual violence in order to illustrate
the way in which women are subjected to symbolic violence. The discourses
reiterated in both the safety advice and media reports play on and
exacerbate fear of crime, not only subjecting women to a form of social
control but also under the guise of ‘commonsense’, creating
an implicit division between women who follow the advice and those
who do not. Furthermore, as a result of these public discourses, women
are often persuaded that they should behave in a particular way - for
example, by avoiding public spaces. In relation to Bourdieu’s
concept of symbolic violence, such behaviour may be seen as a form
of consent to domination. This is not a conscious consent but due to
a ‘tacit and practical
belief made possible by the habituation which arises from the training
of the body’ (Bourdieu 2000: 172).
The onus is therefore placed
on women to protect themselves
from sexual violence, rather than on men to avoid committing
it. Failure to comply with this well-meant ‘advice’ results
in the woman victim of sexual abuse being seen as to blame in some
way, while much of the blame is removed from the male perpetrator.
The status quo is thereby maintained by reiteration of the dominant
position – that it is incumbent on women to take precautions
rather than on men to take control (of themselves). The censure heaped
upon women who appear not to behave ‘sensibly’ and who
become victims of sexual abuse, indicates that even before the obvious
violence takes place, women are subjected to a legitimate form of power
through which symbolic violence can be exercised.
Polite Eroticism and Sexual Ambiguity:
The Curious Case of Dora Gordine
Jonathan
Black
Research Fellow in History of Art, DorichHouseMuseum, KingstonUniversity,
London, United Kingdom
This proposal grows from my research on Dora
Gordine, a major 20th
century British sculptor, as Research Fellow based at Dorich House,
the
home she had built for her in 1936 and where she lived until her
death
in 1991. The House is now a museum devoted to her sculpture owned
by
Kingston University. Born into a prosperous middle-class Anglophone
German-Jewish family in Latvia, Gordine grew up in Estonia still
a part
of the Russian Empire. From an early age she identified with British
culture, institutions and the English language. Though the Russian
Revolution led to the death of her beloved father, she was able to
remain in Estonia after WWI and with an Estonian passport moved to
Paris
in the mid 1920’s. There she moved into a studio in Montparnasse
and
former close friendships with British women artists such as the sculptor
Hazel Armour and the painter Alison Debenham. In Paris she first came
to
public attention with the exhibition of so-called ‘exotic’ portrait
heads such as The Chinese Philosopher (1925) and Guadeloupe Negress
(1926-27) and ‘erotic’ nude figures of non-western European
females such
as Javanese Dancer (1927). However, from the outset, commentators on
such works found it extremely difficult to assess how they fitted into
the existing paradigm of the racially ‘exotic’ as eroticised
and
therefore compliantly available. Indeed, one British critic concluded
that much of the ‘unnerving oddness’ of her work lay in
their singularly
elusive and ‘polite eroticism.’
In the light of such conflicted
readings between the wars of Gordine’s
work, this paper will explore the deliberately cultivated ambiguity
of
her sexual persona in both her life - her marriage in 1936 to latently
homosexual British aristocrat the Honourable Richard Hare as well as
close friendships with, pioneering travel writer Freya Stark; Decadent
poet Arthur Symons and notorious roué Sultan Ibrahim ibn Abu
Bakr of
Johor and in her art i.e. in works depicting indigenous peoples of
South-East Asia during the five years (1930-35) she lived in Singapore
and in bronze figures of British servicemen depicted nude in the manner
of classical Greek statuary such as Above Cloud (1945) modelled by
the
pilot of a Spitfire fighter aircraft. This paper will argue that
Gordine’s imagining of male and female sexualities for the time
was
unusual for the degree to which it is distinguished by its ambiguity
and
even incoherence – a blurring of gender roles enhanced and accelerated
by the lived experience of the Second World War
Erotic Servitude: Slave Unchained
Luisa
Orza
Independent Scholar, United Kingdom
This paper uses erotic fiction to explore the themes of erotic servitude, power and pleasure. It is the story of a woman entering into a Master-slave relationship (as a slave) for the first time and discovering a side of her sexuality that is daunting, exciting and frighteningly powerful to her. The story traces the journey of the slave’s self-discovery and challenges Western cultural taboos, and norms around pleasure, fidelity, trust, identity and control. The tension of the writing is maintained in the questions of where the power lies in the relationship between Master and slave. It is deliberately ambiguous and mocking throughout the story, juxtaposing the slave’s submission with her ultimate sense of invincibility which emerges at the end. The session will involve a reading by the author, followed by space for a discussion of the themes between the author and audience / participants