Women and the Politics of Place: A comment
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24/1/02
8:32 am
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development 45(1): Upfront Note
by the Society for International Development with the support of the Rockefeller Foundation prepared by the authors and Michal Osterweil. See the editorial in this issue for more details on the project.
1 This article is a much shortened version of the background paper prepared for the project ‘Power, Culture and Justice: Women and the Politics of Place’, co-ordinated
Reference Beasely, C. and C. Bacchi (2000) ‘Citizen Bodies: Embodying Citizens – A Feminist Analysis’, International Feminist Journal of Politics, 2(3): 337–58.
Women and the Politics of Place: A comment ARIF DIRLIK
ABSTRACT Arif Dirlik looks at how the political and ideological issues raised by September 11 endow the project, ‘Women and the Politics of Place’, with a new significance – and urgency. He looks at the importance of rethinking politics at this historical juncture from the perspective of women and place. KEYWORDS civilizational boundaries; globalization; September 11; Taliban; transformation
The shadow of September 11
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September 11 has cast a shadow on how we think, what we say, and what we do. The shadow weighs with particular heaviness on the people of the United States; but judging by responses from around the world to what happened in New York City and Washington, DC, few have been untouched by it. We stand at a crossroads. The grief caused by that foul deed easily turns into anger, and a longing for revenge, which, if unchecked, is likely to bring destruction and further grief to untold numbers of innocent people, themselves victims of the circumstances that brought it about, and its misguided perpetrators. The other alternative is to mourn, and find in the mourning an occasion for reflection on those circumstances, that we may work our way out of the spiral of violence that already has brutalized many, and now threatens to consume us all. The political and ideological issues raised by September 11 endow the current project, ‘Women and the Politics of Place’, with a new significance – and urgency. This project, as I understand it, is both decon-
structive and constructive in intention. It seeks to deconstruct the abstractions of political economy and cultural discussion that erase concrete everyday experiences, and serve the legitimization of power in one form or another. It also hopes to offer possibilities of reconstructing the world in a way that recognizes the necessity of satisfying longterm social, political and cultural needs, which presupposes a guarantee of subsistence, and the priority in the formulation of policy of the experience of the world in the concrete. Women have a particular significance in any such project. The crucial point of departure for the project is enunciated by the authors midway in the statement, when they write that: political activities carried out by women around the body, the environment, the community and the public arena are redefining political action. They are redefining the political to take into account their own gender conce
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