Category: Wikileaks

08 Jan

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Dissecting feminism’s dead end

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Now cross-posted at the Overland Journal blog. 

One Dimensional Woman is Nina Power’s 69-page treatise and call to arms, articulately railing against contemporary portrayals of women. Power’s anger is at the narrow confines within which women must locate themselves, and the “trademarking” of feminism for a range of projects that are harmful rather than liberatory. Acutely sharp in places, and humorous in others, it speaks frankly as it winds its way through issues from vintage porn to the rise of the “uber-feminist” Sarah Palin.

Power discusses some of the historical and contemporary feminist staples, such as pornography and social attitudes to the wearing of the hijab, but in doing so breathes fresh air into these questions. Her discussion about violence in pornography and its relationship to changing attitudes of young women to what is expected sexual conduct is illuminating, highlighting that issues of sexual behaviour and choice are not historically unchanging but socially constructed.

Her discussion takes place within an analysis that is conscious that the term “feminist” (and indeed the wider feminist project) has been stripped of much of its sharpness and liberatory potential. For me this underlines that the feminist project is not a movement that exists outside the confines of a state attempting to shape and modify it (not that any social movement does). Rather it is a movement that ruling elites have successfully co-opted, taking its agenda for their own ends, perhaps more extensively that has been the case for other progressive movements. Feminists may have stormed the corridors of state and political power, occupying high-level governmental and bureaucratic positions, but in that process the cause of women’s liberation has reached a dead end. And, as Power highlights, the circumstances for many women outside elite circles have actually moved backwards.

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Filed Under: class, feminism, Wikileaks

18 Dec

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Which side are you on?

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The horrifying deaths of refugees near Christmas Island this week produced two notable responses. The first, recycled endlessly in recent times, was the call for people to not use the tragedy to gain political advantage, a ridiculous idea given that Australia’s current refugee policy has few reasons for existing except in the service of politics. As Left Flank argued in July:

Unable to promise real improvements in people’s lives, the major parties have turned to nationalism and immigrant-bashing to divert attention from their failures and to find easy scapegoats. The “debate” over asylum seekers and border security is thus about neither. Rather, it is an intervention in domestic politics, displacing economic insecurity into xenophobic insecurity, and thus getting the politicians (temporarily) off the hook.

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Filed Under: Bob Brown, Greens, Iraq, media, refugees, state, the Right, Wikileaks

11 Dec

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Let me tell you a secret… WikiLeaks, the state and hegemony

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What is the nature of elite rule and how can it be challenged? This is the real question behind the political crisis caused by the WikiLeaks revelations. Compared with other leaks, the scale and breadth of the information being released makes it impossible not to reassess how state and citizens interact. Despite the attempts at distraction from the powerful actors most disrupted by the leaks — whether through attacks on the legality of the operation, prosecution of its founder on apparently unrelated charges, or allegations of its potential to cause more harm than good — they have profoundly shaken already waning trust in social institutions.

Suddenly the dissembling and sheer cynicism of politicians, military chiefs, state bureaucrats, diplomats and business leaders is out in the open; emperors stand uncomfortably naked, and statecraft (both internal and external) increasingly looks like the conspiracy against the people it has always been. It should not be surprising that one response from above has been to claim that really nothing surprising has emerged, as if to render their duplicity banal when for years they have assured us of most excellent intentions. “Move along, nothing new to see here,” they might say.

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Filed Under: Gramsci, Greens, Guy Rundle, Iraq, media, revolution, state, Wikileaks

31 Jul

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Apologist overload: Wikileaks and Australia’s Afghanistan non-debate

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While Australia’s political class and media were obsessing over leaks from within the Labor cabinet this week, an altogether more important set of leaks found its way to the front pages of newspapers worldwide. Sourced by Wikileaks, over 90,000 military documents around the war in Afghanistan were released simultaneously by The Guardian, The New York Times and Der Spiegel. They catalogue a litany of imperial hubris, mismanagement and callous disregard for the people of a country that seems to have little time free of foreign occupation.

Filed Under: Afghanistan, Iraq, media, Slavoj Zizek, Wikileaks