Women's Resistance - The Theory and the Practice

In preparation for tomorrow's International Women's Day, and global women's strike, I am posting three articles here.  The first, from the Verso site, is an interview with Judith Butler, maybe the pre-eminent radical philosopher now active in the Anglophone world.   I've written about Butler several times already - in celebration of her winning of the Adorno Prize and the unholy flak she faced when she did so, as a brave anti-Zionist Jewish intellectual, in particular.   But while I began reading Butler properly only in the last decade, when she wrote increasingly about Palestine and the Middle East, it must immediately be admitted that her career extends at least another decade further back, to Subjects of Desire (1987), her study of French Hegelianism, and then to Gender Trouble (1990), her groundbreaking and career-making account of gendered identity not as an essence or mere biology, but as a constantly reiterated performative function.  This problematic has not fallen away from Butler's thinking since those early books, and in this interview, which was made by Jean-Philippe Cazier to honour the publication of a French translation of her book Notes Toward A Performative Theory of Assembly and first appeared at the Diacritik site, we find her re-thinking the nature of demonstration and public politics in performative terms.

The second and third articles on on notable examples of women's struggle in two widely separated parts of the world, Argentina and Palestine.  In each region, women's battles grow out of particular or local difficulties, but, via protest and representation, will achieve global resonances tomorrow.  The article on women in Argentina comes from Jacobin; that on women and the fight for Palestinian rights and independence comes from ElectronicIntifada.

First, Butler and Cazier:

Acting in Concert: a conversation with Judith Butler

Next, Veronica Gago and Augustina Santomaso on the situation in Argentina:

Argentina’s Life-or-Death Women’s Movement

Lastly, Sofia Arias and Bill Mullen on Palestinian women:

ON 8 MARCH, STAND WITH WOMEN OF PALESTINE

Conor

Global Women's Strike - Mass Protest on International Women's Day, March 8, 2017

Next Wednesday, International Women's Day, in over 40 countries women will march in protest, agitating for reproductive rights, and against violence in the economic, domestic and institutional spheres.  In Ireland, the particular focus for the strikers will be the campaign to repeal the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution, which disgracefully equates the right to life of a foetus to that of the woman who bears it.

To mark this great event of mass protest and agitation, I am posting an article on the strike, from Jacobin, and also the LRB spring lecture by Professor Mary Beard, the brilliant English classicist based at Cambridge, which is on 'Women in Power'.  First, on the strike - Cinzia Arruzza and Tithi Bhattacharya explain its meaning

What the Women’s Strike Means

And then Mary Beard, from the London Review of Books website:

Women in Power

Conor