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

[Shuddhabrata Sengupta]

Dear Arnab,

I will respond to some of what you have said later. But first a  
question, what on earth is
'theoretically incorrect'?

Can theory be 'correct' or 'incorrect'?

curious,

Shuddha
On 19-Feb-08, at 6:44 PM, ARNAB CHATTERJEE wrote:

> 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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