Women and Men in East European Transition. Summer School, Cluj-Napoca,
July 23–38 1996.
Margit Feischmidt, Enikô Magyari–Vince, Violetta Zentai,
eds. Cluj: Editura Fundat5iei Pentru Studii Europene, 1997. 265 pp.
Taken from Budapesti Könyvszemle—BUKSZ, Winter 1998, pp. 467–69.
There is virtually no social phenomenon which is not covered by the
bland title of this book. Though the editors carefully avoided using
the terms “gender” and “feminism” in the title, the book can nevertheless
be interpreted as expressing sentiments relevant to feminism. The volume
certainly draws a correla-tion between the sexes, but it also discusses
how society perceives gender. The reason for abstaining from using the
term “gender” in the title is mainly due to the sporadic de-bates about
the use of the word, which are evidenced in both Mary Hawkesworth’s article
“Confounding Gender,” and a related debate in Signs (Vol. 22. No. 3. Spring
1997). In 1996, with the financial support of the Soros Foundation and
UNESCO, the Babes5-Bolyai University’s Department of European Studies (Cluj/Kolozsvár),
the College for Cultural Research in Cluj, the Anthropology Program of
Janus Pannonius University in Pécs, and the Foundation for the Women
of Hungary (MONA), organized a summer school in Cluj, Romania entitled
“Women and Men in East European Transition”. Approximately fifty-two participants
and lecturers from Western, Central, and Eastern European countries took
part, as well as twenty-eight students from Romania and Hungary. Altogether
around eighty people attended the summer session and though their interests
were not identical, their achievements are mirrored in this volume. The
intention of the conference and of this volume is clear; it was designed
to promote the collaboration of scholars from the East and the West, to
encourage closer relations between Romania and Hungary, and to stimulate
interest in gender studies. Though the lecture topics were broad, they
encompassed issues which can also be discussed from a gender studies perspective,
such as unemployment, social policy, nationality, human rights, mass-media
ethics, politics of reproduction, and sexual minority movements. The presentation
of such a broad range of topics was made possible by inviting lecturers
who employed a wide range of methodologies.
The volume’s nineteen studies encompass a broad range of essay topics,
for example: Róbert Braun’s wide-ranging artistic essay, Beáta
Nagy’s research summary, Ann Graham’s research proposal, János Raduly’s
journalistic approach and Judit Takács’ presentation of literature.
The editors point out the linguistic and technical difficulties in
presenting the articles homogeneously. It would have been useful if they
had provided a complete list of the articles and works referred to so that
the many overlapping themes could have been highlighted. The surprising
omission of even a single reference to French literature suggests that
there may be linguistic obstacles to reading the French theorists: Lacan,
Derrida, or Foucault. I was under the impression that no such obstacle
existed, but with the exception of Miklós Hadas’ work, it is obvious
there must be one.
Had the editors of the volume and the organizers of the course been
consistent with their emphasis on gender studies as a discipline, they
would have considered editing a useful handbook for all the English-speaking
students who are enrolled in the newborn gender studies and women’s studies
programs. JirŠina SŠmejkalová’s article emphasizes the lack of communication
between Eastern and Western social scientists since the end of the Cold
War. She points out that there are many Eastern European graduates who
are not able to understand the articles in the New York Review of Books,
an important source for their colleagues overseas. It is unquestionable
that the terminology used in gender studies is English. Had the editors
published this volume in Romanian and Hungarian as well, they may have
found a way of escaping the limits set by the English language. However,
many of the studies included in the volume have already appeared in both
English and German publications. The editors might have noted that the
studies by Susan Gal, JirŠina SŠiklová’s and JirŠina SŠmejkalová
have also been printed in the Budapest magazine Replika, as well as a slightly
revised version of Madalina Nicolaescu’s study. Another study by Susan
Gal can be also found in an English compilation. Beáta Nagy and
Mária Adamik have printed their studies in German publications too.
This book fails to offer any revelations but it does however make you
wonder as to how long the profession can afford to publish such short,
poorly researched studies in one volume. The gender model of transitology
has produced a new kind of volume of studies in which everybody writes
about their current academic interests. This reviewed volume has
nothing to be ashamed of in this field. Although it has some faults, it
does stand on its own. It seems that the advice of Western women
to their Eastern sisters has become less imperative. However, the
research on the transition period is ahistorical, and as such, the volume
fails to take accounts of the roots of events in the most recent past.
The book discusses the failure of the communists as a stroke of lightning
in the dark; but merely describes what it wants to see by it offering no
explanation as to causes and circumstances.
The title holds the promise of “Eastern Europe” (Eastern Europe
referring to the states of the former Soviet Bloc), but the articles deal
mainly with Hungary and Romania, with the exception of two studies on the
Czech situation. (Slovakia is missing, although the magazine Aspekt from
Slovakia attracts feminist intellectuals, who sharply criticize both patriarchy
and their Czech “sisters” who are helping to contribute to the international
isolation of Slovakia.) Polish and Dutch civil organizations are also presented
in a short essay.
The first chapter of the volume is called “Feminism and Fear”. SŠmejkalová
and SŠiklová discuss the absence of feminism in Eastern Europe.
Mária Adamik asks instead, “How Can Hungarian Women Lose What They
Have Never Had?”—equality between the sexes—and discusses Hungarian social
politics and the failure of equality politics. Mihaela Miroiu
presents six basic feminist experiences: the feminine being, femininity,
the secondary status of women, women’s invisibility in society, women’s
defenselessness and the symbolic comparison of women to nature. Anca Gheaus
also writes on the social invisibility of women.
The second part of the volume attempts to define the meaning of “social
space,” by discussing civil society, Hungarian female entrepreneurs, and
Polish and Dutch female politicians. The third section in the volume, “Body
Politics,” presents five studies, four of which are on Romanian politics
of the body; two deal with the Ceaus5escu era, one with the Romanian mass
media after 1989, and the final study with the changing image of beauty.
Esther Captain’s essay is also included in this section. She studies the
forced prostitution of women under Japanese rule in the Dutch East Indies
and relates this phenomenon to the use of rape as a weapon of war in the
war in Yugoslavia. There is a great demand for analysis of the connection
between war and sexual aggression, but the volume is far from adequate
in this respect. Esther Captain erroneously considers the institution of
forced prostitution as a specially Japanese phenomenon in war. She could
have analyzed the relationship between Japanese culture and aggressive
behavior, as Yuki Tanaka does in his book about Japanese war crimes. The
author does not refer to some of the basic literature on this subject,
which deals mainly with Nazi Germany. Had Esther Captain made use of this
German literature, she wouldn’t have argued that the small number of European
prostitutes reflected a Japanese disposition for their own race. The small
number of women of European origin in the Dutch East Indies were also treated
brutally by the Japanese and their situation cannot be compared to the
more severe treatment of indigenous people.
The fourth part of the volume, “Contested Identities,” consists
of five articles: three discuss masculinity, one looks at lesbian identity
and one at a science fiction novel by Octavia Butler (a successful Afro-American
writer). Róbert Braun’s introductory essay examines general and
theoretical postmodernist questions relating to Eastern Europe. Readers
unfamiliar with the kind of English common in publications of this sort
are helpless when faced with this type of sentence: “As Etienne Balibar,
Immanuel Wallerstein, Bell Hooks, and Cornel West describe, a renaissance
of 19th- century nationalism may be seen for some promising liberation
from the oppression of traditional cultural and political hierarchies within
Western societies: it may recover marginalized voices and give the false
impression that we may return to innocent origins” (p. 186).
Ovidiu Pecican examines ideals of Romanian masculinity. Eastern
European gender studies tend to focus on issues that deal with masculine
identity. This is probably because of the proportional dominance of men
in Eastern European social sciences, and also because of their superior
status within the scientific hierarchy which enabled them to travel to
the West and bring home their interpretation of genders studies. For example,
the first Gender Studies course in the region was held in the early nineties
in Prague by the Sociology Department of the Central European University
(CEU), and was taught by a male instructor whose lectures in large part
discussed the theme of masculinity. In this section, Pecican identifies
the origin of the Romanian masculine ideal in “the victimized male who
was fighting for a good cause but undeservedly failed”. This ideal is evidenced
both in Romanian folktales and in the biographies of Romanian historical
personalities (such as the valiant warrior Mihai Viteazul, Constantin Braˆncoveanu,
Horea, and Avram Jancu). These heroes fail when villains betray them. In
opposition, Pecican argues that the Hungarian masculine identity (represented
by heroes such as Attila, Saint Stephen, Rákóczi and Kossuth),
offers an active and aggressive role as the Hungarian masculine ideal (p.
204). We can conclude from his theory that not only did Rákóczi
and Kossuth fight without hesitation, but also that we really do need serious
empirical research to support theories of masculine identity. Pecican
interprets Romanian examples of masculine ideals from historical figures
all the way up to Ceaus5escu, who, according to Pecican, deliberately embodied
every attribute of the ideal Romanian male and revived symbols from the
past in order to encourage this perception of himself; for example, the
sceptre from the age of the Emperors. With the greatest respect for the
problems of Romanian masculinity, we may add that being a Moldavian or
Wallachian ruler did not ensure one’s safety and security, just as being
a communist dictator with blood on his hands was not enough to ensure Ceaus5escu’s
own safety and security. Still, this doesn’t necessarily lead to the conclusion
that a Romanian male should be passive and regressive. The changing
perception of Romanian masculinity will be brought about by “the sphere
of civic society, the activity of non-governmental organizations and the
free mass media”
(p. 211) as Pecican argues. However, empirical research of a scientific
standard should also play a role—and naturally, this would not be independent
of the general democratization of Romania.
Miklós Hadas writes on Hollywood Oscar-winning movies made between
1985 and 1995 in his article, “Postmodernity and Masculine Identity”. Judit
Takács offers a brief survey of English and Dutch literature on
sexuality in order to give a “theoretical and practical content” to homosexuality.
Unfortunately, she only offers a two-page description of the Hungarian
situation, where she lists the formation of Hungarian homosexual associations
in Budapest. She uses a quote from her 1993 interview with a Danish sociologist,
Henning Bech, to inform us that Hungarian homosexuals are still busy “organizing
and trying to manifest an identity and a lifestyle publicly”(p. 243). Perhaps
she is right that in “northwestern continental Europe” homosexuality is
already out of fashion, but readers here might have preferred to read about
those homosexuals who are struggling for their own identity in their everyday
environment. At the same time, in other places where homosexuality
is a punishable criminal offense (as in Romania), research should be enriched
not only by Western European case studies, but also by new points of view
from Eastern Europe. The last piece in this volume, by Eva Federmayer,
is based on Octavia Butler’s science fiction novel Dawn. Federmayer projects
this novel onto the Hungarian realities of the problematic transition period,
thereby reinterpreting the concept of “normality” in an “allegorical” way.
This volume confronts us with our present. We should attempt
to answer the question how today’s narrowly-defined core of academic professionals
can overcome the linguistic, institutional, and scientific isolation they
are currently experiencing. This summer university course was an important
first step on the path towards an answer. The summer course brought together
the lecturers and students of two countries that have not had an easy academic
relationship with one another in the past. Romanian and Hungarian scholars
successfully initiated an academic discourse about gender at the Babes5-Bolyai
University. The next step is to start thorough research and publications
(with financial support mainly from existing “Western” sources) that would
help the development of gender studies in this region. Because, as
the introduction to this volume states, “human dignity and freedom”. (p.
14) can only be attained by extending knowledge in and about the discipline
of gender.
http://www.c3.hu/scripta