USB Journals (Univ. Köln)
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Doch was sind Daten? Bedeutungsdimensionen eines vielschichtigen Begriffs
No full textIm Fokus des Beitrags stehen Überlegungen zum Begriff der Daten, der im Diskurs zur ‚data literacy‘ als verbindendes Element erscheint. Zunächst setzt sich der Beitrag mit dem Datenbegriff in konzeptionellen Überlegungen zur ‚data literacy‘ an Hand ausgewählter Beiträge auseinander, die aus unterschiedlichen Fachkulturen hervorgehen. Daran anschließend werden Bedeutungen des Datenbegriffs durch eine begriffsgeschichtliche Annäherung aufgespürt. Der Beitrag schließt mit einem Ausblick auf Möglichkeiten, wie unterschiedliche Begriffsdimensionen und epistemische Konnotation an Hand von Beispielen thematisiert werden können
The Razor Edge of Accommodation: Violent Perception and the Nonbinary Body in Gender Failure
No full textWhat does it mean to be “retired from gender,” and what role does such an identity play in daily life? Engaging with the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Judith Butler, this project attempts to elucidate the experience of nonbinary – that is, external to the male/female gender binary – gendered individuals, and the ultimate unintelligibility of that experience. Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological approach to perception allows for an exploration of the social norms and regulations that determine how gender is defined in Western culture; combined with Butler’s significant work on gender, phenomenology proves a useful tool for revealing the constructedness of gender. Although an arbitrary system, the gender binary serves as a mechanism of so-called social truth: because the nonbinary reality rejects this truth the nonbinary gender performance not only appears unintelligible to the binary other but also represents a threat to social stability. This paper uses the memoirs in Gender Failure – written by two self-identified nonbinary individuals – to consider how social norms inform binary perception and how that perception constitutes the nonbinary self. Perceived from within the binary matrix, the nonbinary self appears unintelligible: as a result, the validity of their gendered reality is threatened. Conscious of the conceptual gap between nonbinary and binary individuals, this project explores gender as the subject of the perceptive act and not only outlines the delegitimization of the nonbinary reality but also suggests opportunities to make space for non-normative gendered experiences
“Can I […] claim to revive these stifled voices?": Writing, Researching and Performing Postcolonial Womanhood in Assia Djebar’s Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade and So Vast the Prison
No full textThis article approaches Algerian author Assia Djebar’s novels Fantasia and So Vast the Prison in translation and from a Muslim feminist perspective. More specifically, this article examines how Assia Djebar narrativizes the processes of empowerment and disempowerment amongst Muslim women in Algeria under the oppression of two authorities: the French empire and everyday patriarchal structures. Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade is a multi-layered novel that charts the colonial violence between France and Algeria simultaneously with the struggles of the Algerian Muslim women. It explores not only the personal histories of those who fought against France during the occupation, but also the private lives of the women who contributed to the nationalist effort. I ask how Djebar approaches the challenge of trying to provide silenced women with a voice after experiencing war-time sexual violence, whilst being aware of the linguistic restrictions which are upon her. In the second half of this article, I discuss So Vast the Prison, exploring how Assia Djebar represents the complex politics of ‘the Gaze’ between men and women in Algeria. I focus on how her female characters are able to appropriate the male gaze and critique sexual politics not only through language but through the movements of the body and visual media. In these two texts Djebar frames women as crucial to the development of the nation but resistant to homogenizing assumptions about the ‘postcolonial Muslim woman’ as voiceless, representative of national interests, and excluded from historical discourse. Ultimately, I argue that Djebar’s work encourages the recognition of women’s agency in national and historical discourse, and challenges limited understandings of the role of Muslim women in Algeria. By doing this, I argue, Djebar becomes an important voice in the broader project of dehomogenizing Muslim women in the Western imagination
Review: Güner Yasemin Balci: Das Mädchen und der Gotteskrieger
No full textIn lieu of an abstract, here is the first paragraph of the review:
Güner Yasemin Balci’s latest novel, Das Mädchen und der Gotteskrieger (2016) (The Girl and the Jihadist, my translation), explores what inspires young women to radicalize themselves and join Islamist terror groups. Balci’s sixteen-year-old protagonist, Nimet, is a hopeless romantic whose idea of a life in the Islamic State consists of preparing raspberry ice cream with a whipped topping for her jihadist boyfriend, Saed. Research into modern jihadist recruiting narratives suggests that, although fictional, Nimet’s story is fairly typical for young, female Europeans being courted. According to Islamic studies scholar Hamideh Mohagheghi, the wish for an intact family can be a driving force behind women’s decisions to join ISIS. In 2015, Mohagheghi published an elaborate commentary on the IS women’s manifesto in Frauen für den Dschihad: Das Manifest der IS-Kämpferinnen (2015) (Women for the Jihad: The Manifesto of Female IS Fighters, my translation). The manifesto was written by the Al-Khanssaa Brigade, a kind of religious female police force that arrests and punishes women who do not abide by the strict dress and behavioral codes upheld in IS territory. In her commentary, Mohagheghi demonstrates how Al-Khanssaa paints a picture-perfect family idyll, in which women are able to thrive as mothers and housewives while their loving husbands provide financial stability and protection (131). In order to attract young women like Balci’s Nimet who pursue this perceived domestic security, the authors downplay and idealize the strict Sharia laws as interpreted by Daesh that govern everyday life
Normative and Contextual Feminism. Lessons from the Debate around Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting
No full textThe case of female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) is a touchstone for controversies between universalism and cultural relativism, both within and beyond feminist thinking. Revisiting the discussion regarding FGM/C provides important insights for contemporary feminist thinking because it touches upon issues that are highly relevant to today’s discussions involving the question of human rights, individual and collective identity, othering, inequalities between the global North and the global South, the culturalization of gender and the intersection between gender, class, and ethnicity. Discussing feminist universalist and feminist cultural relativist perspectives on FGM/C, the paper reframes the two approaches as mutually constituting and conditioning each other. This mediated model contributes to a normative and simultaneously contextually embedded approach as a basis for a substantial analysis of FGM/C, and for contemporary feminist thinking
“Realistically Queer”: Queer Connection and Interdependence in Russian Doll
No full textBy examining the ways that Nadia and Alan—the two protagonists of Netflix show Russian Doll—experience gender, madness, and interdependence, this article argues that Russian Doll encourages open normativities and highlights the importance of relations beyond hetero-or homonormative coupling. While both Nadia and Alan fail at gender and fail to properly accept help for their mental distress, their growing ability to connect to their surroundings and to the other characters allows them to heal from the trauma of living and of dying. Using queer theory, including understandings of vulnerability, interdependence, and gesture, I argue that even though both main characters are seemingly heterosexual, Russian Doll is “realistically queer” in its insistence on queer temporality. Key words: Russian Doll; queer theory; open normativities; temporality; interdependence
Frontmatter and Editorial
No full textIn lieu of an abstract, here is the first paragraph of the editorial:
The field of children’s and young adult literature seems haunted by a deep-seated contradiction: while this field arguably constitutes one of the biggest, thriving and continuously growing literary markets, the global YA market does not at all reflect the diversity of children and young adult readers that form its audience. The issue of who is represented and who can see oneself represented – who can and who cannot relate to characters in a story and on which grounds – are powerfully foregrounded in Gail Gauthier’s (2002) question: “Whose Community? Where Is the ‘YA’ in YA Literature?
Frontmatter and Editorial
No full textIn lieu of an abstract, here is the first paragraph of the editorial:
This special issue of Gender Forum is the final issue of our yearly ECR issues. Eight years ago, former editorial assistant Dr. Laura-Marie Schnitzler (at this point she was still completing her PhD), was interested in fostering researchers who are at an early stage in their career. More often than not those researchers have hardly the possibility to publish and if at all, they might be able to publish a review. However, we wanted to offer researchers in their early years a platform where we can assist and support them by going the extra mile in peer-reviewing their articles. We also wanted to find a platform for some of the papers that have been written as part of their university education but needed to be adapted to publishable articles
"Trans is Hot Right Now": On Cisgender Writers and Trans Characters in Jeanette Winterson’s Frankissstein and Kim Fu’s For Today I Am a Boy
No full textTrans is “hot right now” (Winterson 1226). But who gets to write about trans issues? Winterson’s and Fu’s books follow in the upsurge of trans visibility in the mainstream media referred to as the “transgender tipping point” and marked by Laverne Cox’s appearance on the cover of Time Magazine and prominent trans celebrity interviews on the Piers Morgan and Katie Couric shows in 2014. However, visibility can also be a “trap”, as Gossett et al. have argued, in that they “accommodat[e] trans bodies, histories, and culture only insofar as they can be forced to hew to hegemonic modalities” (xxiii). Mia Fischer explains that “the popular assumption that the increased visibility of trans individuals in public discourse automatically translates into improvement in transgender people’s daily lives” needs to be challenged (5). In addition to the disparity between visibility and real-life problems, the question of how trans people are represented is also problematic. As Brynn Tannehill put it, “when nearly every media portrayal of a transgender [person] is as someone who is incapable, sad, and/or pathetic, it makes it that much harder for us to be taken seriously and dig ourselves out of the hole we’re in”. I take Kim Fu and Jeanette Winterson as two recent examples of cisgender writers taking up trans characters, representing them in outdated and offensive ways, and basing their research about transness on sources – traditional trans memoirs, medical facts, and mainstream media – that replicate patterns which trans authors have identified as harmful. Following Jacob Hale’s “Suggested Rules for Non-Transsexuals Writing about Transsexuals, Transsexuality, Transsexualism, or Trans,” I propose five new rules cis fiction writers should adhere to when writing trans characters
Racialised Boundaries. Frances Hodgson Burnett\u27s The Secret Garden and Alice Walker\u27s “In Search of Our Mothers\u27 Gardens”
No full textThe garden in Frances Hodgson Burnett’s novel is not a neutral, ahistorical, timeless idyll but culturally defined, and insofar it is deliberately distanced from India and everything that India is intended to denote in the novel, the garden is created as an exclusive space, signifying whiteness. Burnett’s narrative unfolds to support the ideology and values of imperialism. The racial aspect of Burnett’s garden becomes explicit when juxtaposed against Alice Walker’s “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens”, an essay written several decades later and also resonant with the images of women and gardens. Whereas the garden in Burnett has many conventionally British associations of health and healing, nature and bounty, creativity and self-expression, Alice Walker pays tribute to a tradition of black women whose relation to a garden was not given, but rather highly contested and violated. The black creative women missing and muted in Burnett’s garden find place in Walker’s essay and thus Walker works to broaden the literary tradition Burnett relates to