A Reflection on Workshop on Gender and Visuality, Cape Town. 26-29 August 2004.
by Sadan Jha
The threads opened up during the course of the workshop may be perceived as rooted in some of the fundamental questions related to the field/s of ‘gender’ and ‘visuality’. The first and foremost among these problematics can be formulated in terms of the area of scholarship: How to reconstruct the margins in the existing discourse on gender and visuality?
In the long as well as immediate histories of colonialism and colonial knowledge formation, the ways of looking at subject has been a monopolistic culture of euro-centric male gaze. It is not that the non-European, non-white, non-male subjects were not present or not visible but, in the academic discourses, these subjects were not visible or more appropriately not considered as worth viewing. At best, one can argue that these subjects were viewed as objects devoid of any life spirit, any history, any eye of their own. Hence, at one level, some of the papers of the workshop aimed at recovering these objectifies subjects of European history (or eurocentric historiography). Joan Marsh’s paper on ‘recovering the black presence in British art 1800-1900’ is a representative of this endeavor. Engagement with the presence of black bodies for the consumption of the white gaze of the empire is focused in the paper in terms of African bodies. The paper also clears the ground to ask a number of questions i.e. how these bodies have traveled as pictorial bodies? How the gaze looking at these bodies was differentiated by a number of social hierarchies including class and gender? Earlier Catherine Hall’s book, White male and Middle Class actually provides an opening by demonstrating that the responses over question of race ( more specifically slavery) in European society in the middle of eighteenth century was differentiated by both class and gender dynamics. Joan Marsh’s pioneering work opens a ground to ask similar question in the context of gender and visuality. It also motivates one to ask, how these black presences have their own histories? How these bodies were looked not merely by European whites but by themselves? The questions are obviously too many. But, for a historian the more crucial fact is the availability of sources to ask such questions. Alternatively formulating, is it possible to read conventional sources in fresh manner to ask some of these questions. The second presentation of the workshop quite successfully demonstrated this intellectual quest.
Looking at a range of conventional reprtesentational registers, Patricia Mohammed charted the historical journey of the image of the Caribbean itself. Certainly , the paper was an advancement on the history of representations and the history of images . However, despite this long journey and traveling in and through a range of registers, the paper remained closely tied up within the frame of history and history writing. This methodological dimension can be accepted either way. Close dialogue or the disciplinary framework which was present in most of the papers of the workshop may be regarded as a strength of the workshop. However, this same point can also be recognized as a major drawback of the workshop. This is especially more crucial as the workshop had a rich potential to achieve major methodological breakthroughs in the context of gender and visuality. I will elaborate this speculative aspect later in the report.
In the rest of the report, I will be less concerned on mapping each and every paper and panels and instead try an attempt to analyse, in random fashion, some of the impressions and insights that I gathered from this intellectual exercise. This will then help me to locate the workshop in wider discourse that is around gender politics and visuality.
Most of papers were addressed to charting out a complex histories of representations. In this context, visual was defined as an engagement with certain representational registers. The history of appearance related practices making both the human body and a range of advertisements as a site where the politics of gendered codification took place ( Katheleen Robinson on Skin Bleaching, Lynn Thomas on ‘Modern Girl’, Ayhan Akman on cartoons as site for the transfigurations of Turkish male identity, Jeanne van Eeden on the landrover, Helmut Puff on ‘Death of Orpheus’, Lindsay Clowes on manhood in Drum, Michelle Rowley on Caribean political advertisements are some of the attempts trying to decode the politics of representation by mobilizing a range of social, cultural and discursive strategies. The most prominent among these strategies was obviously the deployment of the race and gender.
In these cases, bodies (both anthropomorphic as well as symbolic bodies) which are offered to be seen, construct identities, circulate as commodities and becomes a site for the construction of histories.
The other side of the coin is, the question, who is looking at these bodies? How has the historic construction of the consumer of skin bleaching products taken place? Who is the onlooker of cartoons? But, we also need to ask whose histories are these? Does this history only contain codes waiting to be decodified by historians, cultural scholars, political scientists, littérateurs? Or, is it possible to recover viewing experiences of the subject themselves? For example, can we recover how modern girl looks at her own body when she looks at her representation in a range of images. Where is the space of desire in terms of her own when a ready made discourse is available bombarded consciously or unconscioualy with Freudian, foucauldian and feminist politics. Lorna Quejong’s reading of her own experiences along with billboards, monuments and signs in urban visual public sphere is an attempt to problematise this question of the desire and the politics of looking at images.
Lorna’s attempt to read her own desire in this context further provokes me to address the issue of the contemporary, personal and temporal experiences of ‘eye’ looking at images and the recovery of narratives of visual experiences which are located in the past and accessed only through one another representational forms. Hence, unlike the case of Lorna who can access the body ( which is her subject of study also) directly, for others ( abovementioned ) the body is available only as their subject field. Hence, at least, in terms of the source material to narrate a story, history or reading experiences the engagement of ‘eye’ over the body remains mediated only through representational bodies. What is also needed in this context, is to pose a question about the technologies in and through which these representational bodies make themselves visible before the eye of a reader ( historian, political scientists). This demands a further problematisation of the regimes of memories/ amnesias of representations, politics in/of the archive and the politics of the discourse as well as discipline itself.
Through out the workshop, the politics of the discipline hounded me the most. The engagement with visuality and gender is merely another exercise in already established disciplines i.e. history, literary theory, cultural studies, gender studies or does this engagement has a potential to challenge the dominant paradigms of these disciplines? In the analytical exercise, is it possible to be led by the sources ( representational registers) themselves rather then by any chronological frame? We all know the significance of contextualising the subject in terms of time and space. However, we often end up guided by the time or space in our engagment with images. Why do we always restrict the flow of images within a particular time frame?
A very rich presentation by Lindsay Clowes and comments made by Ciraj Rasool provoked me this question quite obviously. Dealing with a rich source, Lindsay was trying to understand the changing constructions of manhood in Drum in 1950s. Ciraj demanded her to look at the web of representations to open the comparative dimensions of images in a wide range of registers and practices to further problematise the construction of manhood. The richness of the sources, I believe, allows another methodological opening. The paper can be pitched radically different manner. I find the time frame too restricting in this context. It is possible to be guided by the representational registers, abandon the restriction of the timeframe and analyse the construction of manhood by locating the subject at some critical sites of its production, circulation and consumption. Thus, instead of making visuality as subordinate to time centric construction of history writing it is possible to be guided by the histories of the body, its (in)visibility, visual regimes and technologies of power operational in and around the site of the body. In this hypothetical situation, the time frame and other methodological tools of history writing will remain and must remain as guiding tools but not as restricting disciplinary boundaries. Here, social sciences need a very careful and cautious engagement with art practices.
The dangers of the interact between social sciences and art practices often come in the form of one resisting others' methodological viewpoints. In this case, I wished more contextualisation of the art works while art practitioners wanted their works a free floating and abstract engagement with representations. In discussions the split between artist and academics came more sharply. Responding over Patricia Mahmood's methodological remarks, Colette Veasey expressed her uncomfort with this division. The discussion was crucial as people in social sciences often take old and taken for granted notions of academics and artist community. On the other hand the history of learning informs us that many art practices are now very much part of academics.
In this context, the fruitful way of asking a question may not be about the division between fields and disciplines but how do one interact with other domains and how does the politics of gender influences at the level of knowledge formation. The question of public sphere is also closely linked with the formation of academic field. The work which was very provocative and needs to be pitched both at the level of academic discourse as well as at the level of the politics of visibility in public sphere was by Zanele Muholi ( on the politics of everyday-ness in the lives and representation of lesbians). As a social scientist, how can we make use of such powerful photographic images by Zaneli. This also then leads to the ways in which everyday lives are approached in recent history.
The cinematic mode is another register to approach the issue. There were two papers directly dealing with this register. Marianne Gullestad worked on the issue of race and gender in missionary documentary movies. Drawing upon the rich archive her paper was located more at the level of historic construction of images of charity and other-ness. On the other hand, Onookome Okome's paper on nigerian vedio films opens a rich mine of visual data where the construction of daily lives of middle class womenhood is taking place. However, again the paper does not ask the question of viewership and the ways in which these representations of womanhood are influencing the gender relations in the family or outside the family. In fact, we need to fracture the omnipresent eye of analyst/ researcher while being engaged with visual registers or the issue of gender politics. We need to go beyond mere 'historical reconstruction'/ 'reading' of the discursive fields of visuality and gender. The discussions were helpful in this context.
The workshop was quite packed up with presentations. However, the little discussion time often turned into quite thought provoking and heated moments. Lot of openings were made and threads of the discussions again led to various complex terrains of the gendered visuality. The issue of ethics and methodology may be considered one such.
The question is how to show any representational register as a reference material when the visual appearance of the material itself has a potential to do violence against specific community. The ready made answer , in favour of ethics of academics will be not to show the images which violate personal or communitarian dignity. But, the methodological impulse would be to demonstrate the source material while making an argument on the basis of it. The dichotomy between these two moods becomes quite crucial in the case of dealing with visual materials. How can you talk about the the ways in which female bodies are consumed by a particular historical gaze without actually revisiting those bodies in representational registers. Revisiting is re looking. History of genocide has taught us the revisiting is also re-opening ( the forgotten wounds/ traumas). Can we leave those tortured bodies or can we make them victim of double gaze. They were looked at once in the past. Now, these bodies are looked at again by historian/ academics. The question will remain open, 'how to look back when we look back', as polemically posed by Kopano during the workshop. The brilliant observation by Lorena Rizzo on the values attached to animals in Namibian society ( if i remember correctly) actually opens the way on how to 'look at' and demands to venture outside the territories hegemonised by rational Eurocentric gaze of the first world. We need to look at the bodies which are left outside the dominant discourses in terms of their own eyes and in the manner of their own. Sadan.
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