Ewa Majewska is a Polish feminist, activist and thinker. She works on the SWPS College in Warsaw and is the writer of Feminist Anti-Fascism, Counterpublics of the Widespread (Verso Books writer, 2021). She was interviewed on the sidelines of the Worldwide Marxist Feminist Convention which befell in Warsaw final November.
Cross-border Talks: What do you assume feminism is at the moment and what are its most vital duties?
Ewa Majewska: I feel the preferred notion of feminism really has lots to do with equality between women and men. It’s a liberal notion that implies that the feminist mission might be achieved when girls have the standing of males. That may be a misunderstanding of feminists. It is the one I am actually not proud of as a result of I feel it’s extremely reductionist. Actual feminism, or the feminism that I am proud of and that I wish to promote, is a principle and likewise a observe of political company that begins from the expertise of being socialised and educated and rising up as a lady. We want this principle, observe and political company to grasp totally different variations of inequalities, totally different variations of discrimination, totally different alternate options to neoliberal capitalist patriarchy.
So for me feminism is rooted in a model of socially constructed expertise, embodied expertise wherein individuals study to be second-class human beings and wherein they construct their emancipatory claims. So for me, feminism isn’t just diminished to problems with men-women or masculinity-femininity. It’s extra about difficult a model of society wherein there are privileged and underprivileged individuals, wherein ”the pure order” is seen as one thing hierarchical, wherein some model of chief or God is on the prime, after which there are women and men and slaves, or people who find themselves underprivileged, or people who find themselves discriminated in opposition to for different causes, akin to sexual orientation, class, faith or ethnicity.
For me, feminism is a reasonably broad doctrine. I am not afraid of claiming it is a massive ideology. It is a massive principle that begins with the embodied and socially constructed expertise of femininity. However then it goes a lot additional and consists of the expertise of different discriminated types of life. It builds utopias or alternate options that problem the established order. A giant a part of feminism can also be criticism of the prevailing society. And self-criticism. I feel that is one thing that Bell Hooks, certainly one of my favorite feminist writers, has mentioned many instances: that feminism generally has this superb means, which at instances turns into an impediment, to be overly vital of itself.
Feminism is the social motion and the speculation that’s in all probability probably the most self-critical of all political positions, theories and types of activism. And that’s good, as a result of it signifies that we try to vary our theoretical place, our political calls for, our types of activism, our types of being. And we are likely to attempt to see the issue on our aspect as effectively, not simply of whoever is being criticised or contested.
For me, feminism is an effort to construct an egalitarian society pushed by solidarity and altruism moderately than competitors and battle. I do not assume now we have to remove battle from our worldview. I feel feminists can very effectively be dialectical or Marxist. However I feel a sure idealistic model of society could be one wherein these conflicts are resolved respectfully and with care for everybody.
“Feminisms are feminisms. They develop out of a rejection of inequality, the oppression and discrimination of girls, the remedy of girls as a useful resource”
That might be the distinction between my imaginative and prescient of feminism and the liberal imaginative and prescient of feminism, wherein we give attention to people and their rights moderately than on individuals’s social make-up. The model of feminism that I help additionally has sturdy financial claims and could be very a lot at odds with neoliberal economics. So I feel that competition-based economics, which is predicated on the concept of instant revenue and which upholds the unequal division of labour and income, is completely at odds with feminism.
I’ve to emphasize that lots of what for me is the feminist battle teaches us to embrace different struggles, together with the struggles of trans and non-binary individuals. I do not perceive how people who find themselves in any means in opposition to trans and non-binary individuals can name themselves feminists. I feel that goes in opposition to the core assumption, which is that being discriminated in opposition to and oppressed due to one’s id is fallacious.
What do you count on to occur in Poland after the elections, when it comes to girls’s rights?
Within the subsequent three or 4 months we’ll see lots of combating, lots of negotiations and lots of efforts to bribe totally different individuals, to persuade them to vary their political positions. However I even have one other expectation. What I simply described was a really concrete imaginative and prescient of the political manoeuvres that is perhaps to come back. However there may be one other factor that is essential in relation to the election outcomes. I and plenty of feminist buddies right here in Poland share the expertise of waking up in a distinct nation. And that is extraordinarily vital, as a result of for the final eight years we have been residing in a rustic ruled by two variations of what I’d name a state of exception.
On the one hand, we had lots of fascist insurance policies and political selections that had been taken principally on daily basis. We had the Polish-Belarusian border points and the atrocities on that border in opposition to racialised refugees. We had not solely anti-feminist, however principally anti-women laws, aiming for a higher ban on abortion than the one which already existed. We had anti-LGBTQI+ declarations, statements and efforts to vary the legislation. We had very tragic moments round work.
We had individuals dying within the office due to exhaustion. So, for instance, we had medical doctors and nurses dying in the midst of their work. We had no less than one employee at Amazon who died of exhaustion throughout the Covid interval. The federal government didn’t intervene very a lot in these conditions. Principally we had this state of exception, this case of treating sure classes of individuals as enemies, as lower than human. However we additionally suffered from what I name this state of exception, which consists of being continuously provoked by political selections and statements that trigger very intense and really tough feelings, akin to worry, anger and nervousness.
We have been residing like this for eight years. Anybody with a progressive place and mindset wakened on daily basis to new atrocities and new hate speech unleashed by the federal government. The largest distinction now, after the election, is that we do not get up with this nagging feeling of hysteria, of worry, of some new unacceptable political choice or state of affairs that now we have to face and act in opposition to. So we’re exhausted after eight years of protesting in opposition to every part: for ladies, for homosexual rights, for refugees, for staff. All these struggles have been each day, very intense. So I’d say we’re on the opposition aspect, and right here I do not make a lot of a distinction between the left and the liberals, as a result of many liberals had been genuinely busy criticising the conservative authorities as effectively. We’re exhausted.
Proper now, on the one hand, we’ll see lots of amusing happenings on the political scene. However however, no less than we do not have that exhaustion, that anger, that worry each day in our emotional life. That may be a implausible change.
In September 2022, we noticed the outbreak of main protests in Iran which had been about feminist struggles and in opposition to strict controls. Is there an Islamic feminism? Is it the identical form of feminism that we see within the West, or are another international locations making their feminist battle totally different when it comes to company?
I wish to make two feedback about the way in which you ask this query. One is that you’re very delicate in describing the state of affairs in Iran. I consider that what girls and their allies have been scuffling with in Iran since final 12 months, since September final 12 months, was really a genocide in opposition to girls.
It was not about working situations or hairdressing or something like that. It was really the lively efforts of the Iranian state to erase girls, principally to kill girls. So the state of affairs was rather more dramatic than it was described. I make this remark in order that we will transfer on with a barely altered notion, as a result of I’d not scale back the protest in Iran to hairstyles or training or girls’s rights in that delicate means. I would say it was the fitting to dwell as a lady that was at stake there.
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And one other factor is that I discover it very problematic to speak about Islamic feminism, as a result of if we wish to discuss Islamic feminism, we even have to speak about Catholic feminism or atheist feminism. We’d be dividing feminism into spiritual, regional or cultural contexts, one thing to be averted. We do not speak a lot about European feminism, for instance, primarily as a result of it is perceived to be so various. There’s feminist literature, together with an entire postmodern selection.
So I am fairly in opposition to being open to the concept of Islamic feminism, as a result of within the international locations which are thought-about Islamic, now we have Marxists, now we have postmodernists, now we have traditionalists. You already know, feminisms are feminisms. They aren’t influenced by the cultural context alone. They develop out of a rejection of inequality, the oppression and discrimination of girls, the remedy of girls as a useful resource, as a supply of unpaid and invisible labour, as a supply of reproductive energy. And this battle could be very related in Poland, in Iran, within the USA, in Brazil, in all places. So for me, the very idea of Islamic feminism is an concept that comes from Europe, an concept that’s based mostly on our try to grasp the world regionally. And I do not assume that is the easiest way of trying on the world.
So I’d discuss girls in Iran, or feminists in Iran, however I would not name them Islamic feminists, as a result of they is perhaps in opposition to Islam, or they may wish to protect a sure model of Islam, however on the similar time they may wish to promote Marxist economics, for instance.
On this area that’s perceived as Islamic, now we have Rojava girls, now we have Palestinian girls, now we have Iranian girls. We’ve got girls in Iraq and Afghanistan who’re constructing barely totally different variations of feminism. However what unites them shouldn’t be Islam. That isn’t the principle situation for feminists. Nowhere, not even in international locations the place Islam is the most important faith, is it the most important situation. Their primary concern is at all times the state of affairs and the place of girls but in addition of all these areas of tradition, of society, of the economic system which are perceived as female: social copy, invisible work, the care sector and different areas the place what’s perceived as culturally female is concurrently abused and discriminated in opposition to.
And I feel that in Islamic areas of the world, as in all places else on the planet, girls have very totally different solutions to those issues. What I like concerning the girls in Islamic international locations who’re combating for rights and equality and for feminism is that they’re amazingly courageous. The braveness to be a feminist in these elements of the world, it truly is superb. So maybe that may be the one distinction that I see.