[Reader-list] Beyond: Taslima's mimesis and feminist theory

[ARNAB CHATTERJEE]

Dear Naeem and all others,
                   I don't doubt the territories of
context that you want for Taslima's narratives of
groping, but then the question that would haunt many
is, how come even though Sanjib and the hungries had
talked about it well before her,took an amount of time
to have been adopted and put to prolific use by
Taslima. Is it the degree of textual awareness of
Bangladeshi audience or writers which is , as you say,
more than that is gotten in this bengal? And following
that, this keenness of attention then, proved
productive for Taslima at least ( with her "public
attention grabbing" etc.;) this, in a moment of
mimetic rivalry, she had done in her critiques of
religious antifeminism as well, much from Sukumari
Bhattacharya and so on.
I was reluctant to grant Taslima this status of narrow
confinement since this is, and many other feminists,an
experience that goes into their theory building (
Naeem also, "nasty, invasive groping").
Internationally even this is true. James Dawson,
considered by many ( including me) as one of the
greatest writers of sexual fiction, in a piece called
...." .......Japanese torments" talks with excess about
groping in Japanese trains. And the word "awareness "
used by you is doubly significant. It is a part of
that feminist " consciousness raising" paradigm. And
Taslima ( and exemplified by numerous examples from
Bengal and the world)uses that too to draw major
inferences. My hunch then is less to do with the
archival originality of this form of sexification than
the force with which it is integrated to higher
levels. And while reading me here, Naeem makes the
same mistake which some in Kolkata have taken
deliberately  to miraculous heights ( Arnab justifies
rape, sexual harassment etc.)I'm a believer in a
different formm of critical theory.( Critique brings
texts ( all texts) to  crisis and neither advocates
nor destroys any of them.)  Despite my warning, Naeem
says I justify ( in a sense) these acts. It was not
me,I quoted from a book published by the women's
commission of West bengal   in order to argue that
there are problems in generalising and universalising
feeling -- is slowly dawning upon orthodox and
ordinary feminist circles too. There are major
theoretical objections to reckon with. What I said is,
I find the masculist argument ( that all women enjoy
being groped) and this feminist argument ( that all
men are gropers and all women hate it) boring,
predictable and theoretically incorrect. And again,
the counter example is from Bhaswati Chakraborty. I'm
for neither kind. My articles on sexual harassment,
rape are being finalised and may be they will be
published someday and I may tell you that  they will
be very very different. This lesson is what
phenomenology teaches   without ever trying to teach.
To work or arrive at "without presuppositions" is a
hard lesson. To bracket all ideological naivete seems
to many as impossible; to bracket means to be in a
state of quotation, to write while "withholding
commitment."We need to do just that and if you want  a
bright example which I will cite from an ideological
in-house magazine and which I will suggest all and
that what I suggest my students, friends and everybody
is to read Shuddhabrata Sengupta's "I/Me/mine" article
in the Signs journal. Here is what I call a "feminism
from nowhere", that recognises the essential
contingency of all and each. The sexual harassment
books and bibles ( including the one I've cited) fail
because they either suppress this fact, or override
the challenges posed by them. That may help them win
funds and jobs and scholarships and so on but also
mediocrity --and which  many know but are scared to
rehearse ( unlike me) that they are really poor.
Taslima therefore should be read differently and not
in terms of  the force of theoretically incorrect
examples. That was my sole hunch.
Thank you
arnab





--- Naeem Mohaiemen <naeem.mohaiemen at gmail.com> wrote:

> >>From: ARNAB CHATTERJEE <apnawritings at yahoo.co.in>
> 
> >Naeem here, "Taslima was the first to write in
> 1989/90 about how the
> narrow confines and massive crowds of boi mela had
> given cover to
> groups of eve teasers.
> 
> >>remind Naeem that it was not Taslima, Sanjib
> Chattopadhyaya was the
> commercial first to talk about sexual groping in
> bengali buses and
> puja crowds
> >>the Hungries were the first avantgarde to do that
> in parallel magazines.
> 
> Arnab,
> 
> I was specifically talking about her being "the
> first" in the
> Bangladesh context, and in the Ekushey Boi Mela
> (Bangla Academy,
> Dhaka) context.  The Hungries and Sanjib were both
> writing about West
> Bengal, not Bangladesh.
> 
> When the Prime Minister of Bangladesh visited
> Kolkata in 1990s, she
> was introduced at a Boi Mela (over public
> loudspeaker) as the "Chief
> Minister of Bangladesh" (this led to a huge
> diplomatic row, but as it
> was the slightly India-leaning AL government in
> power, it did not
> reach nuclear level as it would surely have done
> under BNP/JAMAAT of
> last 5 years).  So while there are numerous
> synergies, learning,
> common histories, conjoined fates, tragic mulatto
> being, 'separate but
> equal' narratives, etc., something being written
> about in West Bengal
> does not automatically make it across the border
> (there's a separate
> discussion needed about the culture balance deficit
> between WB and BD,
> i.e. BD culture space is far more aware of what's
> being written in
> Kolkata than vice versa).
> 
> So in the sense of raising awareness about this in
> Bangladesh, Taslima
> was the "first" I remember [I am sure some
> Bangladeshi reader on this
> list will now remind me of some little magazine from
> Aziz Super Market
> Dhaka that also talked about it, but certainly no
> one talked about it
> with the velocity and public attention grabbing (in
> a positive sense
> of that word) of Taslima.]
> 
> As for the analysis that women somehow discover
> their sexuality/object
> of desire status through public groping, well I can
> only hope you were
> taking the piss in citing those "studies".
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