Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

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2013; Feminist Studies; Volume: 39; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/fem.2013.0009

2153-3873

Stephanie Gilmore, Uta G. Poiger,

Art, Politics, and Modernism

preface In this second decade of the new millennium, we are frequently reminded of the power that structural forces have over people's voices, bodies, and rights. The articles in this issue make clear that neither the search for resistance nor the forms it takes are simple matters. Our authors cover a range of topics from the transnational circulation of cultural products to how ideal bodies are imagined: they include musician Miriám Makeba's antiapartheid politics, contemporary anti racist feminist debates in the United Kingdom, cross-national efforts to preserve artworks lost or destroyed during the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, sex education in early twentieth-century United States, how US belly dancers negotiate intrusive tipping practices, and the efforts to categorize bodies and bodily parts that exceed gender norms. This issue also features two clusters focused on noteworthy contemporary events: the fortieth anniversary of the Roe v. Wadedeci sion and the highly publicized gang rape case in Delhi. The essays, art, and creative work in this issue vary in their lessons about resis tance: the history of abortion rights campaigns in Argentina illus trates the success of appealing simultaneously to multiple principles such as pragmatism, freedom, and justice; the problem of Islamopho bia in the United Kingdom calls for increased clarity in articulating feminist relationships to cultural difference; and the wave of street protests against the gang rape in Delhi may not necessarily lead to Preface feminist outcomes as far as the law is concerned. And as we commem orate the historic US Supreme Court decision on abortion, we also witness a shifting terrain: while one feminist calls for a more vigor ous celebration of abortion, another notes the weakening valence of the label "pro-choice," while yet another warns that abortion rights discourse does not acknowledge disabilities as an important form of human difference. In the opening essay of this volume, Ruth Feldstein traces the international and US careers of South African singer Miriam Makeba in the turbulent 1960s. In the process, she shows that issues of gender and black sexuality were in fact central to the transnational formula tions of the antiapartheid struggle that linked Americans, Europeans, and Africans. At the same time, many commentators in the United States read Makeba as "essentially African" and thereby obscured the mutual influences between South African and US culture. In spite of such simplifications, Makeba, while often seen as apolitical, was able to help articulate complex positions through a range of performance styles. Makeba helped change how Americans of different ethnicities saw civil rights and antiapartheid struggles, and she helped set the stage for assertions of female power and sexuality that we now associ ate with 1960s and 1970s feminism. A number of articles in this issue remind us that regulatory regimes over bodies require our close attention to the mutual construc tion of race, sexuality, and gender as well as more neglected markers of human difference such as health and disability. Shari L. Dworkin, Amanda Lock Swarr, and Cheryl Cooky situate the "gender verification" that South African athlete Caster Semenya was required to undergo in August 2009. Through their analysis of media coverage in South Africa, the authors turn our attention not to whether Semenya is a "woman" or a "man," but instead to the challenges to the International Athletics Association Federation for insisting on such crude verifica tion. They demonstrate how complex dynamics of nationalism and race reinforce simplistic categories of sex and gender. Andrea Deagon turns our attention to belly dancing in the United States, an activity dominated in the twenty-first century by white, middle-class women. Deagon trains an analytical lens on the act of "body tipping" a dancer by inserting bills into her costume as she performs, and she illumi nates the subtle power dynamics at play in commodifying white Preface women's performance of Arab femininity. Karen Weingarten's review essay covers books that explore how sex was "expressed, taught, advo cated, and restricted in the United States from the 1860s to the mid twentieth century." The essay tracks the work of sex educators, public health officials, and women writers in entrenching views of respect able female bodies. Female genital integrity...