Review of the volume "Gender: between Humanities, Social Sciences, and Legal Studies", edited by Desislav Georgiev and Denitsa Nencheva. The topic is presented through the figure of the in-between, ...which allows for a dialogue: authors from different research fields and paradigms present their readings of a variety of issues related to the sometimes considered untranslatable gender.
This article proposes a reading, in some texts of the 16th century, of the way in which colonial subjects apprehend the existence and corporality of others, as well as their own, through the figure ...of the garments, of their absence (nudity), and of their displacements ("trans-vestism"). The habit - what covers and identifies, the custom - is here the complementary face of the figure of "discovery". The vestment served as one of the first parameters for the classification of the other. As protection, dissimulation, or ritual, clothing invests bodies with new potentialities, with the body being understood here as an active and complex process of appropriation according to which certain historical and cultural possibilities are embodied. Performativity is the repetition that the law needs to update itself. The European narrative, especially, was focused from the beginning on the nudity of others, but some conquerors also experienced, for different reasons, a change of habit. Trans-vestism, on the other hand, can represent survival strategies, or gestures of identity adjustment, whether of gender or social status. The new reality of mestizaje in the colony came to problematise the social categories established in the Occident. In the act of searching for and redefining this new reality, these people question the very notion of identity, traditionally understood as something stable, and allow us to destabilise the idea that the colonial binary is immutable.
Present paper is about the N194 tomb of female individual from the Doghlauri burial ground - one of the largest monuments identified in the South Caucasus both in terms of the area and number of ...tombs. From the large number of burials excavated at Doghlauri burial ground, the tomb N194 unearthed in 2013 is of special importance due to the archaeological material and data obtained during the excavations, which allow us to make important conclusions in terms of arrangement of the burial, reconstruction of the burial rite, and finding parallels of the items intended for the deceased. The burial was partially damaged, but the skeleton and grave goods were relatively well preserved. The burial inventory is quite diverse. Pottery is represented with four vessels typical for the Doghlauri burial ground as well as for the extensive territory of the central Transcaucasia of the Late Bronze Age. Jewelry from the N194 tomb is diverse. Parallels are known from the several monuments, which allow us to circle the geographical area of their distribution and determine the chronological framework.
This article focuses on the cordel as an idiosyncratic manifestation of Brazilian popular culture. It sets the results of original research on cordel gender representations within the specific ...social, cultural, and political contexts in which they originated/emerged. The article is based on research grounded in cultural studies and this discipline’s insistence on the critical importance of race, gender, and religion. The author argues that cordels – poems printed in cheap booklets with an illustrated cover and marketed to the mass public – offer important insights into existing social and gender norms in Brazil. Whereas in the past the genre was dominated by men authors and upheld conservative Catholic values, nowadays it has creatively adapted to the changing social realities. A comparative analysis of specific titles written in rural Brazil in the second half of the 20th century and titles written in the early 21st century by emerging women authors in an urban setting reveals starkly different patterns of gender representation. Contemporary authors – many of them women – are well aware of the cordel’s importance as a tool in the socialisation and apprehension of cultural meanings of gender. They represent gender through the cordel in ways that are subversive and serve to undermine the existing patriarchal norm. The cordel today continues to develop into a genre which is open and pluralistic in its multiple gender representations that reflect Brazil’s diverse social realities.
The following text of Mariarosa Dalla Costa is the translation of a chap-ter from the book Gynocide: Hysterectomy, Capitalist Patriarchy and the Medical Abuse of Women. The author focuses there on ...the abuses performed on a mass scale, such as hysterectomies, ovariectomies, and clitoridectomies, arguing that they are a con-tinuum of violence against women that started with the beginning of capitalist development. This violence consists, above all, of systemic dispossession of women from access to medical knowledge in order to extend control over every sphere of social reproduction.
The two decades since the adoption of the first Security Council Resolution under the Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) Agenda has paved the way for much introspection and debate. While there have ...been several positive impacts such as the inclusion of women in peacemaking processes and in bringing to light the deliberate deployment of sexual violence in armed conflict as a tactic, there have also been several gaps in implementation. Since the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1325, legal, policy, and academic discourse has focused on armed conflict and women and has made an essentialist case for the inclusion of women in post-conflict peace processes. Among one of the major concerns with the WPS Agenda in its verbiage and implementation is the tendency to conflate 'gender' with 'women's issues.' As a consequence, non-binary gender identities in general, and their experience of armed conflict in particular, have been sidelined and rendered obscure. Sexual violence in conflict has been understood through a limited 'gender' lens, and the unique experiences of queer people in armed conflict have neither been acknowledged or addressed in policy, legislation, and transitional justice measures. Tis paper critically evaluates the WPS agenda and identifies gaps both in its language and implementation through National Action Plans. It presents the unique challenges of sexual and gender minorities in armed conflict and calls for a gender, peace, and security regime founded on the principles of intersectionality, queer theory, and the right to self-determination.
The article is devoted to the patron saints chosen by young Catholics for the sacrament of Confirmation, recalled several years after the decision. It was based on focus group interviews conducted ...with stu- dents in the last years of secondary school. Despite the decision of the Polish Bishops’ Conference that young people should keep their baptismal names at the sacrament of Confirmation (if it is the name of a saint), most of the women interviewed had the option of choosing any patroness. According to the narratives presented herein, it was an important event for them and most of their decisions were careful- ly considered. Their searches regarding names were most often inde- pendent, rarely related to either religion lessons or parish catechesis.The patron saints chosen by the interviewees a few years earlier were often referred to as specific moral role models. The holy or blessed behavior and attitudes displayed by these women were usually pos- itively perceived by girls on the threshold of adulthood. Therefore, it is worth reflecting on both preventing young people from autono- mously, reflectively choosing a patron saint with whom they want to identify due to interests or professional plans as well as the entire process of familiarizing them with personal religious role models from parish catechesis and religious education at school.
Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex has been considered as one of the most crucial books that influenced the second wave feminists, who mobilized during the 1960s and 1970s new massive feminist ...movement in America. This article analyses re-ception of the book in the American scientific/academic journals, and in that way, contributes to the field of periodical studies. This article, first, analyses post-war American context with the focus on status and role of women in the society, and then, moves on to enquire into the reception of The Second Sex in five American scientific journals, published during 1953 and 1954. The political context is inter-twined with the absence of the critical reflexion among the first American authors who wrote about The Second Sexregarding the role of women in the 1950s America. The article analyses the language, key topics for the authors of critiques (that the book is primarily French; that it cannot apply to American women and context; that the book is non-scientific, despite the publisher’s promotion, and that it does not provide directions for the social changes Beauvoir calls for; and finally, that the book has problematic arguments regarding motherhood and the status of married women).
