The Abused Goddesses and the Fissures of Referentiality
Prasanta Chakravarty The Abused Goddesses advertising campaign (http://www.buzzfeed.com/regajha/indias-incredibly-powerful-abused-goddesses-campaign-condemn) has given rise to strong reactions in the virtual space. While some initial reactions on the campaign were cautiously positive, albeit with some amount of unarticulated unease, soon the discursive feminist space on the internet articulated its reservations against the campaign powerfully and in no uncertain terms. If the advertising agency and the people behind it think that all publicity is good publicity then it is entitled to think so naively. That is hardly the point—that is, merely making an ‘impact’ through bad publicity or controversy. The success and failure of the campaign depends on many variables and the jury is still out. But it is not just about whether those images are ‘reaching a target spectatorship’ but about trying to understand the context, timing and also the modes of representation. In this case, the detractors tell us that using such battered images and narrative in order to make a case against domestic violence is shady and untrustworthy at several levels. First, contextually, the organization behind this campaign is a deeply conservative one which is trying to cash in on drawing our attention to such retrogressive images of womanhood, women as distant and glorified goddesses. The organization funding it: Save Our Sisters—the very name betraying the worst kind of infantilizing and patronizing NGO activity that is rife when such organizations, flushed with funds and a civilizing missionary zeal undertake to save backward, unenlightened nations such as ours. Taproot, the advertising agency behind the campaign seems to be playing right into the hands of people having such disturbing motivations. In addition to patronizing, in this case the narrative is orientalised rather crassly, it would seem. This is a problem that the feminists have been alive to right from the initial stages of the movement: that the latent codes of protective chivalry and spin thereof not only fortify established domestic structures and hierarchies but may hide within themselves a culture of perversity against its victims privately. Such secret perversity is perpetrated by highlighting the exaggerated, hyperbolic mode of socially representing women as unattainable and chaste creatures. For example, one may ask whether a lascivious hunter mentality lurks beneath when the god-man highlights chastity in women and concomitant asceticism in men, taking quick protective cudgels on behalf of the entire womenfolk. There is something dubious in the very language that argues for such purity. Even as such false glorification goes on in public, battering, maiming and abuse may go on unchecked within. As it often does. The reprehensible nature of such enterprise needs to be marked, identified and brought to notice. Again and again. In some parts of the West, (particularly in Northern Europe and the Low countries) democratization and reformed modes of Christianity have been able to exorcise such forms of ‘medievalism’. Until forms of irrationality and monstrosity erupt again. Individual acts of violence and passion sometimes take collective shape from time to time. They surprise us with their staying power. But just like these advertisements are not just about their impact, they are also not necessarily and purely about the motivations of this or that dubious organization. I wonder whether there is more to it than to be ‘for’ or ‘against’ such representations; representations that are likely to come back to us in future too in new ways. And not necessarily from such missionaries either. How can this event and act of representation be historicised by not radically separating the practices of social agents from their multiple identities in their dynamic, active culture but by prolonging personal and collective memory? This is something that I wish to talk about, namely, the simultaneity of presence, absence and anteriority in a chain of a narrative about memory in acts of representations. And what might be the secrets of the represented object with the operations of representing? Is it of any use to the feminist discourse if we are able to read the discourse of infantilizing by taking it to its logical extreme, that is, by marking the traces of the monstrous and perverse within the interstices of representation and history? The Mnemonic Image The idea of mythical images taking a full shape would appreciate its Janus faced double-handedness: on one hand is the enactment of the mimetic art of likeness, by giving proportion and depth to the models and thus claiming a certain kind of iconic realism. But images of worship, the miraculous eruptions that sustain the validity of such images also simultaneously produce an appearance and simulacrum—a metaphysical excess by which proportion no longer remain natural. Images spill over. Images of worship then may become monstrous or sublime or serene which may again be accompanied by simultaneous forms of monstrosity. There are times when the mimetic may exceed its original purpose and become expressive or both tendencies may create a productive tension within an act of representation. It is here that eikestic art may relate to the fantastic. History marries form. It is upon this wilful deception, relying on a Coleridgean sense of willing suspension of disbelief, that the whole idea of relating to images and icons and relics and symbols stand or fall. The binary division of history and mythography is suspended and the material nature of irrationality is brought before our senses in its full force when the idea of the mnemonic image begins to take shape. If it happens purely at the terrain of the image, it sidesteps the temporal, historical dimension. That is private aesthetic. But if we provide history with movement and simultaneity then the mnemonic may serve other functions. Many cultures live in simultaneous time. So, we say that such and such person has a feudal mindset or such and such is thoroughly modern in her outlook or in fashioning herself. Many temporal varieties of people make our world and therefore, each one of us may hide multiplicity of temporality within us too. What happens to representations when we come to them from our various selves? Carlo Ginzburg
Coldness and Cruelty: Two Contracts of von Sacher-Masoch
I Contract between Mrs Fanny von Pistor and Leopold von Sacher-Masoch On his word of honour, Mr Leopold von Sacher-Masoch undertakes to be the slave of Mrs von Pistor, and to carry out all her wishes for a period of six months. On her behalf, Mrs von Pistor shall not demand anything of him that would dishonor him in any way (as a man or as a citizen). Moreover, she shall allow him six hours a day for his personal work, and shall never look at his letters and writings. On the occurrence of any misdemeanor or negligence or act of lèse majesté, the mistress (Fanny von Pistor) may punish her slave (Leopold von Sacher-Masoch) in whatever manner she pleases. In short, the subject shall obey his sovereign with complete servility and shall greet any benevolence on her part as a precious gift; he shall not lay claim to her love nor to any right to be her lover. On her behalf, Fanny von Pistor undertakes to wear furs as often as possible, especially when she is behaving cruelly. At the end of the six months, this period of enslavement shall be considered by both parties as not having occurred, and they shall make no serious allusion to it. Everything that happened is to be forgotten, and the previous loving relationship restored. These six months need not run consecutively: they make be subject to interruptions beginning and ending according to the whims of the sovereign lady. We, the undersigned, confirm this contract, FANNY PISTOR BAGANOW LEOPOLD, KNIGHT OF SACHER-MASOCH Came into operation 8th December 1869. ———————————————————————— II Contract between Wanda and Sacher-Masoch My Slave, The conditions under which I accept you as my slave and tolerate you at my side are as follows: You shall renounce your identity completely. You shall submit totally to my will. In my hands you are a blind instrument that carries out all my orders without discussion. If ever you should forget that you are my slave and do not obey me implicitly in all matters, I shall have the right to punish and correct you as I please, without your daring to complain. Anything pleasant and enjoyable that I shall grant you will be a favour on my part which you must acknowledge with gratitude. I shall always behave faultlessly toward you but shall have no obligations to do so. You shall be neither a son nor a brother nor a friend; you shall be no more than my slave groveling in the dust. Your body and your soul too shall belong to me, and even if this causes you great suffering, you shall submit your feelings and sentiments to my authority. I shall be allowed to exercise the greatest cruelty, and if I should mutilate you, you shall bear it without complaint. You shall work for me like a slave and although I may wallow in luxury whilst leaving you in privation and treading you underfoot, you shall kiss the foot that tramples you without a murmur. I shall have the right to dismiss you at any time, but you shall not be allowed to leave me against my will, and if you should escape, you hereby recognize that I have the power and the right to torture you to death by the most horrible methods imaginable. You have nothing save me; for you I am everything, your life, your future, your happiness, your unhappiness, your torment and your joy. You shall carry out everything I ask of you, whether it is good or evil, and if I should demand that you commit a crime, you shall turn criminal to obey my will. Your honour belongs to me, as does your blood, your mind, and your ability to work. Should you ever find my domination unendurable and should your chains ever become too heavy, you shall be obliged to kill yourself for I will never set you free. “I undertake, on my word of honour, to be the slave of Mrs Wanda von Dunajew, in the exact way that she demands, and to submit myself without resistance to everything she will impose on me.” DR. LEOPOLD, KNIGHT OF SACHER-MASOCH ————————————————————————————————————————————— Leopold von Sacher-Masoch was born in 1835 in Lemberg, Galicia. He was of Slav, Spanish and Bohemian descent. His ancestors held official positions in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His father was Chief of Police of Lemburg, and as a child he witnessed prison scenes and riots which were to have a profound effect on him. He was appointed Professor of History at Graz and began his literary career by writing historical novels. He met with rapid success: one of his first genre novels, The Divorced Woman (1870) aroused interest even in America. …In the language of Masoch’s folklore, history, politics, mysticism, eroticism, nationalism and perversion are closely intermingled, forming a nebula around the scenes of flagellation; he was consequently disturbed when Krafft-Ebing [Text-book of Insanity, 1879; Psychopathia Sexualis, 1886] used his name to designate a perversion. Masoch was famous and honored as a writer. Masoch’s tastes in matters of love are well known: he enjoyed pretending to be a bear or a bandit or having himself pursued, tied up and subject to punishments, humiliations and even acute physical pain by an opulent fur-clad woman with a whip; he was given to dressing up as a servant, making use of all kinds of fetishes and disguises, placing advertisements in newspapers, signing contracts with the women in his life and if need be prostituting them. An affair with Anna von Kottowitz inspired The Divorced Woman, another affair, with Fanny von Pistor, Venus in Furs. Then a young lady by the name of Aurore Rumelin approached him by means of a somewhat ambiguous correspondence, took the pseudonym of Wanda, and married Masoch in 1873. As a companion she was at once docile, demanding and overwhelmed. Masoch was fated to be disappointed as though the masquerades he planned were bound to give rise to misunderstandings. He was