[-empyre-] most influential, most dangerous, most courageous women
Christiane Robbins
cpr at mindspring.com
Tue Mar 8 17:21:55 EST 2011
And ... for the record ... in case she has not been yet mentioned:
Ralf Huebner Earth News March 7, 2011
http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/news/370619,womens-day-feature.html
Wiederau, Germany
A bronze statue in front of the childhood home of Clara
Zetkin is one of the few remaining landmarks
commemorating the socialist women's rights campaigner
who founded International Women's Day.
At the second International Socialist Women's
Conference in Copenhagen in 1910, Zetkin proposed an
annual day to honour women's rights. Her suggestion was
approved and International Women's Day was first held
100 years ago, in 1911. It is now celebrated on March 8
each year.
Zetkin was born in 1857 in Wiederau, a town nestled in
the sparsely populated region between the eastern
German cities of Leipzig and Chemnitz. She died in
exile in the Soviet Union in 1933.
In the former Communist East German state, the
socialist politician was a national icon whose profile
featured on the 10-Mark banknote.
But 20 years after German unification, she is virtually
unknown to the residents in Wiederau. None of its
streets is named after her, and the former school and
gardening collective that bore her name have been
closed.
Her old home, once known as the Clara Zetkin Memorial
Site, is now simply called the Museum in the Old
Village School.
Zetkin lived in the schoolhouse until the age of 15,
when her family moved to Leipzig. Today, the building
is filled with memorabilia from the early 20th century,
a time of social change and class conflict.
During the East German regime, visitors filled the
house on March 8 each year, said Ursula Bergmann of the
local heritage society.
"Every year on Women's Day there was a trip first to
the memorial site, then something to eat," Bergmann
said. "The memorial was a form of socialist pilgrimage
site."
The guest book bears testimony to the worker's
collectives, school groups and delegations from around
the world who stopped by to honour Zetkin's memory.
"The locals did not like all the fuss," Bergmann said.
When the East German state crumbled in 1989, Zetkin's
statue was not left unscathed by the revolutionary
turmoil. It was an obvious target at the town's main
junction. One morning it was found face down on the
ground, and was subsequently moved out of the town
centre, to Zetkin's former home.
Wiederau is in a part of Germany that has suffered from
the failure of Communism, as state-run industry
collapsed after unification and young people left the
region in droves.
The town's streets are empty, the former department
store is up for sale and Wiederau's former knitwear
factory has been converted into a home for the elderly.
These days the museum draws just 200 visitors annually,
Bergmann said.
But March 8 is still the busiest day of the year, she
said, when radical Left Party legislators bring guests
to celebrate their Comrade Clara. Members of the
heritage society sell coffee and cake to earn a few
euros.
The visitors are hardly ever locals - but the residents
of Wiederau have now made peace with the socialist hero
who once lived in their midst, Bergmann said.
"We know that Clara Zetkin was born here," said a
saleswoman in one of the town's small grocery stores.
But she thought it was right that Zetkin's statue no
longer graced the town's central crossroads.
"She's doing okay where she now stands," she said.
___________________________________________
On Mar 7, 2011, at 1:11 PM, Ana Valdes wrote:
> Some names I should like to add, Flora Tristan, grandmother of
> Gauguin and one of the first socialists, Florence Nightingale, the
> writer Nathalie Barney, the Nobelprize Rigoberta Menchu, Emma
> Goldman, Virginia Woolf, Christine de Pisan, The Rennaisance painter
> Artemisia Gentileschi, the suden Kristina of Sweden, who abdicated
> and died in Rome.
> Ana
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
> On 7 mar 2011, at 21:24, christina <christina at christinamcphee.net>
> wrote:
>
>> Try finding information online about many of these women. These
>> are not all famous people. Check it out. Some are, many are not.
>> Yes, Les Annalistes had a profound contribution to 'the history of
>> everyday life' (Aries, etc.) Natalie Zemon Davis is a
>> particularly notable historian in re the 'invisible' in women's
>> history. The heretics of Carcasson-- I used Ladurie's book as the
>> basis of a new media studio at Santa Cruz (undergraduate digital
>> lab).
>>
>>
>> Let this exercise support one another , not tear each other down.
>>
>> Hoda Aminan
>> Eula Gray
>> Mary Wollstronecraft
>> Mary Whang Choi
>> Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
>> Sussan Tamassebi
>> Rosa Luxembourg
>> Asadah Faramaziha
>> Parvin Ardalan
>> Suely Rolnick
>> Esha Momeimi
>> Axelline Soloman
>> Elena Gil
>> Phyllis Wheatly
>> Frances E. W. Harper
>> Gloria Anzaldua
>> Shirin Ebadi
>> Ingrid Washinawatok
>> Ana Mendieta
>> Marija Gimbutas
>> Helen Keller
>> Mercedes Amaiana
>> Fusae Ichikawa
>> Lola Rodriguez de Tio
>> Florence Kelly
>> Victoria Mxenge
>> Nawal El-Saadawi
>> Ada Lovelace
>> Eileen Gray
>> Pat Hearn
>> Elizabeth Peratrovich
>> Minerva Mirabal
>> Sappho
>> Sylvia Beach
>> Marilyn Monroe
>> Nancy Spero
>> Minerva Bernardino
>> Ginetta Sagan
>> Lee Bul
>> Margaret Atwood
>> Lee Lozano
>> Charlotte Moorman
>> Jane Jacobs
>> Joan Mitchell
>> On Mar 7, 2011, at 8:54 AM, Ana Valdés wrote:
>>
>>> Allow me to add some Marxistic perspective to the discussion :)
>>> But if we see which kind of women we know about, for their lives
>>> or for their deeds: the most of them are aristocrats, nuns or well
>>> educated women, an exception at the beginning of this century.
>>> The class prospective is also applicable to men, we know about
>>> generals, emperors or kings, but very little about peasants,
>>> soldiers and workers.
>>> The Academy and the books are often written from above and it was
>>> only the Annales School, in France, who started to talk about "les
>>> petites histoires", it means the tales of everydays life. As in
>>> Mointalloux, the book written by Emmanuel Le Roy Ladourie or Bread
>>> of Dreams, written by the Italian historian Piero Camporesi.
>>> These books are about European heresies, crushed by the authority
>>> of the Church of Rome in alliance with wealthy princes.
>>> Very few women were able to fight with their own class and with
>>> the oppression of the system. Many of them chose to be nuns, as
>>> Hildegard of Bingen, to avoid matrimony and mootherhood, to be
>>> able to sing, write and create.
>>> Ana
>>>
>>> On Mon, Mar 7, 2011 at 8:02 AM, cara baldwin <carabaldwin13 at gmail.com
>>> > wrote:
>>> What does this have to do with drawing, you ask? In a typically
>>> modernist approach to figure and field we're instructed to balance
>>> figure and ground in a way that is 'convincing'. Even if we
>>> 'solve' this problem by way of recourse to an overall composition-
>>> the multitudes-we are left with the responsibility for our own
>>> discernment and action.
>>>
>>> Sent from my iPhone
>>>
>>> On Mar 6, 2011, at 10:51 PM, Cara Baldwin
>>> <carabaldwin13 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>>> where might 'we' might best focus our energies; figure and
>>>>> ground or the multitude?
>>>>
>>>> My answer to this question took less than a second, actually--
>>>> the multitudes. Figure and ground will take care of themselves.
>>>>
>>>> This is an expanded field, certainly; and one in which figures
>>>> are articulate led not just differently-but more or less visibly.
>>>>
>>>> 'According to a study by the Centre for Women and Gender Studies,
>>>> nearly 85 per cent of the United Arab Emirates population of four
>>>> million is migrant workers. In Bahrain and Saudi Arabia 65 per
>>>> cent of the workforce are expats. In Kuwait it is 82 per cent,
>>>> and in Qatar almost 90 per cent.'
>>>> Women are systematically and historically divested of rights and
>>>> representation. They resist definition and are difficult to
>>>> organize because of their illegibility-at a scale that is global,
>>>> and radically local.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Mar 6, 2011, at 3:06 PM, Ana Valdés <agora158 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Dear Christina, allow me to dissent a little bit :)
>>>>> At the Intifada the women had a very crucial role, I met Leila
>>>>> Khaled some years ago in Amman and her tale of her hitchjacking
>>>>> of two planes in the Eighties: is really atonishing.
>>>>> And I come myself from a generation of women engaged in gerilla
>>>>> warfare in South America. I spent four years as political
>>>>> prisoner in Uruguay for that.
>>>>> I think it's a kind of media issue, we "common women" don't fit
>>>>> in the hero's stereotyps.
>>>>> Cheers
>>>>> Ana
>>>>>
>>>>> On Sun, Mar 6, 2011 at 7:14 AM, christina <christina at christinamcphee.net
>>>>> > wrote:
>>>>> 'most dangerous' --... with help from friends--
>>>>>
>>>>> Vera Zasulich, Hélène Cixhous, Patti Smith, Judith Butler
>>>>> Amelia Bloomer, Scheherazade, Rosa Robata, Sofia Perovskaya
>>>>> Lilith, Hildegard of Bingen, Carolee Schneemann, Adrian Piper
>>>>> Cindy Sherman, Julian of Norwich, bel hooks, Camille Paglia
>>>>> Jingyu Xiang,Vivienne Westwood, Isak Dinesen, Jeanne d'Arc
>>>>> Gertrude Stein, Duygy Asena , Donna Haraway, Maria Callas
>>>>> Grace Paley, Colette, Margaret Atwood, Regina Jose Galindo
>>>>> Leslie Marmon Silko, Eliabeth Cady Stanton, Nan Goldin, Linda
>>>>> Nochlin
>>>>> Boadicea, Lee Lozano, Sofia Perovskaya, Valie Export
>>>>> Hannah Wilke,Rosa Robata,Lee Krasner,Lourdes Casal Valdes
>>>>> Tracey Emin, Scheherazade,Billie Holliday, Amelia Bloomer
>>>>> Marina Abramovic, Angela Davis, Edie Sedgwick, Jessica Mitford
>>>>> Marguerite Duras, Phoolan Devi, Joan Didion, Felipa de Souza
>>>>> Kate Millett, Pina Bausch, Charlotte Corday, Lidia Cabrera
>>>>>
>>>>> yet there are more....
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Mar 5, 2011, at 9:42 PM, christina wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Something is happening when a field becomes visible-- a field of
>>>>> women in Bahrain countering a police line, a field of women in
>>>>> Ivory Coast (shot down, six)--it's impossible not to speak of
>>>>> this new site of action. Remember when the only (s)hero job for
>>>>> women in the intifada was to get oneself blown up?
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Two days from now will be March 8-- Internatinal Women's Day
>>>>> Centenary 1911-2011. http://www.internationalwomensday.com/
>>>>>
>>>>> What happens when finally enough people start to have faith that
>>>>> it actually matters for half of humankind to have human rights?
>>>>>
>>>>> How does this field become visible?
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> empyre forum
>>>>> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>>>>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> empyre forum
>>>>> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>>>>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> http://anavaldes.wordpress.com
>>>>> http://passagenwerk.wordpress.com
>>>>> http://caravia.stumbleupon.com
>>>>> http://www.crusading.se
>>>>> Gondolgatan 2 l tr
>>>>> 12832 Skarpnäck
>>>>> Sweden
>>>>> tel +468-943288
>>>>> mobil 4670-3213370
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> "When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the
>>>>> earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been and
>>>>> there you will always long to return.
>>>>> — Leonardo da Vinci
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> empyre forum
>>>>> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>>>>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> empyre forum
>>> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> http://anavaldes.wordpress.com
>>> http://passagenwerk.wordpress.com
>>> http://caravia.stumbleupon.com
>>> http://www.crusading.se
>>> Gondolgatan 2 l tr
>>> 12832 Skarpnäck
>>> Sweden
>>> tel +468-943288
>>> mobil 4670-3213370
>>>
>>>
>>> "When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth
>>> with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been and there
>>> you will always long to return.
>>> — Leonardo da Vinci
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> empyre forum
>>> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> empyre forum
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