The authoress, while in the process of preparing a monograph on pro-women social movements, describes her attempt to get the answer to the question whether and how the local community identifies the phenomenon of feminism in their area. Using a two-question survey the authoress manages to address a very diverse study group consisting of e.g. scientists, artists, the elderly, uneducated and school students. Their answers build a picture of 'discreet' feminism in Zielona Góra, recognized only by a small number of respondents. Furthermore, the paper lists exemplary sources of Poles' knowledge about gender-related movements, and outlines the situation in the local media. The article is a summary of the first stage of the research; the stage that is supposed to raise the awareness of the challenges that women, willing to actively influence their social situation, face.
the authoress examines in her essay on Agnieszka Holland's 'Fever' (1981), the film adaptation of Andrzej Strug's modernist novel 'The Story of One Bullet' on the 1905 revolution, why revolutionary Kama, the only film heroine, is treated by the director with such cruelty, extreme violence and why her portrayal differs considerably from the literary prototype. The adaptation of 'The Story of One Bullet' was a kind of a rite of transition for the young director - Holland was supposed to make a new transcription; to transcribe two male-written texts for the language of images: the 1909 novel and the 1979 adaptation of Krzysztof Teodor Teoplitz. Holland, who used to film 'scenes from a private life', stepped for the first time in male-centred History, built on the paradigm of heroic death. Analysing 'Fever's' hysterical narrative, the film's composition, scenes' framing and departures from the literary prototype, she examines Holland's successive concessions to the dominant discourse - to find herself in the field of male-centred History.
In this article the comparative analysis of series of works by Ivan Turgenev from Sketches from a Hunter’s Album and from Folk Stories by Marko Vovchok, where the key roles were played by female characters, has been carried out. Having analyzed the characters in the categories of needlessness or as “weird characters” and having used Lancanov’s idea of Alien, one can assume that going out of the boundaries of behaviors defined by society, the women find themselves in no way out. Not only do they not meet the expectations of new time ideology but also they do not fulfill the classical model of a mother, wife or lover. The model of new, “weird” characters experiencing reality and in turn not being able to find themselves in real life, has determined considerably the concept of love in later work of Ivan Turgenev and the pictures of feminists by Marko Vovchok.
The heated debate between feminism(s) and psychology(ies) about being political goes beyond the understanding of feminism as a dangerous ideology that needs to be divorced from the respect for approaches intrinsic to psychological practices. Political activism is frequently understood as a core feminist value, but different ethics can come into play in psychology and psychotherapy. Professionals engaged in critical and feminist approaches seek to combine being political while cherishing the autonomous decision-making of each and every client. However, we also encounter positions where individual work is rejected and only collective activism is to be pursued, or on the other hand, positions where activism beyond individual help is deemed unrealistic. In the following text different perspectives on feminist politics and psychology will be presented. For instance, critical psychology can serve as one of the platforms where feminisms and the critique of psychological theories can come together in claiming that neutrality is impossible. The theoretical part of the article is illustrated with examples, some of which were drawn from the empirical material collected for the authoress' dissertation project 'Gendering Psychological Counselling'.
The article aims to give a concise overview of the development and background of gender studies programs as they can be found at European universities today. As the final institutionalized forms of such programs differ according to the specific goals, strategies and conditions at the given university, the article finishes with the presentation of two different gender studies programmes. Namely, the gender studies bachelor's program, running since the academic year 2004/2005 at Masaryk University in Brno and the master‘s program at the University of Vienna, starting in the academic year 2006/2007. The framework of author's considerations is based on the assumption that the roots of gender studies go back to the second wave women's movement, which developed within a - political and societal - non-communistic context of the 1960s and 1970s. For this reason, the article first adresses the origins and developments of gender studies within this non-communist context, then takes a short look at the communist context and finally deals with the reception and criticism of gender studies within a post-communist context.
At the very beginning of the 20th century the collectivisation of domestic work was a focus of interest for activists in the Czech liberal women's organisations. In the 1920s and 30s, interest in the subject gave rise to several architectural designs and buildings. When the Czech avant-garde formulated its programme of collective accommodation around 1930, its attitude towards this tradition was a distinctive mixture of paternalism and ignorance. Nonetheless, the open approach of liberal feminism to collectivisation explains why the views of the Czech architectural left were so radical, as far as concerned the organisation of accommodation and the definition of the role of the family in modern society. Both camps were reconciled to some extent in 1945-1948. At that time, it was the feminist tradition, in addition to the experience of functionalist architects, which had a direct influence on the implementation of the Czech collective dream: the Prague Solidarity housing estate and the koldums in Litvinov and Zlin.
The authors present the life and work of the literary and cultural theorist Judith Butler (b. 1956). They introduce this with an annotated overview of her works and the reception of these works in the Czech context, particularly her theories of feminism and gender, the concept of the subject and power (the relations between subjection and resistance, the possibility of resistance to power in the context of psychoanalysis and the genealogical theory of Michel Foucault), key aspects of Butler's thought (the categories of 'woman' and the representation of woman, the determination/autonomous action of the subject, and the theory of performativity), and language, style, and textual strategies in Butler's works.
Single professional women (single, educated women with good jobs) have become a growing social group not only in Poland but also all over the world. The article presents this phenomenon and points to its causes in our country and, additionally, places it in a broader, global context. Results of qualitative research, mainly in the form of interviews conducted by the authoress, were used in the analysis of the phenomenon in Poland.
This paper explores how women's roles and participation in resistance to Czechoslovak communism from 1968 to the Velvet Revolution serve as a base for Czech feminist thought. By examining three generations of participants through a gendered, Beauvoirian lens, the emergence of feminism can be easily charted through changing perceived gender roles and increased attention to gender issues. After the events of the Prague Spring, women from different groups of the Czechoslovak underground risked their own safety to exercise free speech and expression. Women's struggles for greater liberties were framed by traditional gender barriers, supposed communist equality, and Western influence. To understand the experiences of female dissidents as a base for Czech feminist thought, one must examine the nature and progression of various underground communities and women's roles within them. Since 1968, an increased emphasis on women's freedoms and liberties has helped create a unique, local sense of femininity and feminism.
The essential aim of this article is to present the progress in research of the contemporary Polish feminist historiography and problems which it faces. It was the feminist movement and progress of emancipation which resulted in the increasing interest in women's history. In fact, there were a few works concerning history of women in the Polish historiography in the 19th century, but they focused on exceptional personalities: queens, saints, women from the noble families. Moreover, the impact of the romantic historiography coping with the national questions simplified the image of a woman, showing her as the heroic Polish Mother. Everyday life of ordinary women remained outside the terms of scientific debate. However, as the consequence of the historical construction of two separate spheres, public and private, women's activity had been restricted to the domestic and personal, everyday life. In connection with this, historians are short of written sources left by women. Lucja Charewiczowa in 1938 was the first to make demand for research on the history of ordinary women, their everyday activities. Contemporary feminist historians see everyday life as the main domain of their interest. They emphasize the importance of research on household, family life, consumption and the culture of everyday life. At the same time, they put stress on the necessity of including the history of women to the main 'universal' historiography. Meanwhile, universal historiography shows increasing interest in history of everyday life, cultural history and comprehensive social history, thus incorporating the research field of history of women, its methods and results.
The article examines the essential principles of feministic poetry of Marianna Kijanovska (on the example of the collected poems „Book of Adam”) with relation to realization of woman’s subjectivity, which is founded on the articulation of specific woman’s experience of motherhood, negation of the patriarchal religious-cultural myth, the use of the alternative poetic language.
The term 'gender' plays a role of import in feminist(ic) discussions in Poland. However, it may trigger doubts. Approaching the pair of notions 'sex'/'gender' as mutually opposing ones misses a perspective that is most frequently assumed in gay studies where a naturalness of homoerotism is an important point of argumentation. The postmodernist thought's cultural standpoint does not provide for a possibility of coming to terms with ecology, the latter being an important challenge of the future.
The autoress' book 'Nomadic Studies: Embodiment and Sexual Difference in Contemporary Feminist Theory' touches upon the most important issues of our contemporary feminist debate, including, inter alia: western epistemology vs. femininity; feminism vs. bioethics; individual issues of European feminism and how the American feminism may affect the theories conceived in Europe. She defends a trans-disciplinary and multidisciplinary methodology of building a female, but also a male, subjectivity in the context of the present time which less and less frequently enables one to refer to the roots whilst more and more frequently requiring from its nomadic dwellers to seek for new methods of constructing their own 'self'. A 'nomadic subject' forms subjectivity being free of any nostalgia for durability, the idea of constancy or permanency being quit. The authoress approaches the option to build feminine subjectivity in political terms, dialogue being deemed its key element. Dialoguing requires a redefinition of what is man in a circumstance where the old definitions prove non-useful, for what is human is re-constructed in the context of global economy, technological revolution, emergence of multicultural societies, or a new social/cultural reality. Her suggestion is that the sexual difference be treated as a positive element of asymmetry between males and females - so that whatever a woman can offer might transform our contemporary policy and the world. Providing that femininity can be defined in a variety of ways.
Pua Rakowska (1865-1955) was a leader of the Jewish feminist movement in Poland, a Zionist activist, an illustrious teacher, writer and translator. She taught Hebrew and since 1891 she ran Hebrew schools for girls in Warsaw. She acted in left-wing Zionist organizations, led the 'Jiddischer Froyen-Farband in Poyln' (Jewish Women's Union in Poland). In 1935, she settled in Palestine. In her publications she focused on women's issues. Her memoirs, entitled 'Zikhroynes fun a yiddisher revolutsionerin' (The reminiscences of a Jewish revolutionary), were published in 1954; they showed this outstanding woman's difficult path to obtaining education and gaining personal and professional autonomy.
The author explains in his article the character and structure of somatic aesthetics, the philosophical discipline he created. This is followed by his analysis of Simone de Beauvoir's complex approach to the issue of body in her 'Le deuxieme sexe', referring to those arguments which might support the pragmatic attitude of somatic aesthetics as well as those recognising the somatic aesthetics' focus on the body as a threat to feminism
The authoress discusses various aspects of feminist impact on pedagogy. A special emphasis is put on the analysis of the hidden dimensions of the pedagogical field. The phenomena of alienation and familiarity of the female and male students within the structures of the analyzed field are grasped as the results of empirical research. In the last part of the article the question of female 'being in the world' of social science is discussed. Feminist standpoint is presented here as the analytical perspective focusing on the gendered divisions within the social positioning and activities of subjects.
The paper deals with the category of gender as an analytical tool used in feminist critical reflection of the philosophical canon. It outlines the main streams of this criticism elucidating the various ways via which women have been excluded from the philosophical domain. One particular kind of this exclusion is illustrated by the case of Harriet Taylor Mill, whose liberal philosophical ideas on women's rights have been marginalised for a long time. The authoress argues for the importance of the feminist re-reading the philosophical canon, by the help of which the one-sidedness of the established explanations could be effectively corrected.
Hana Gregorová’s (1885 – 1958) early work was mostly concerned with themes pertaining to women’s emancipation. Later, the author widened her scope and also dealt with the questions of social justice. Feminist instrumentalisation as outlined in her debut collection of short prose Ženy ([Women] 1912) was combined with projecting a new, better world for all the impoverished ones. Social and pedagogical (didactic) function remained a stable characteristic of her writing. As to her themes, Gregorová was mainly concerned with the depiction of the suffering women and her empathising authorial narrator was a representative figure voicing progressive ideas. Works that the author published before 1918 (but also those from the first half of the 1920s) were later significantly revised. Gregorová updated her early work in accordance with the way her opinions evolved (especially with regards to her affinity towards socialist and communist ideas) and also as a reaction to the changes in social circumstances (the end of Second World War). Analysis of the revisions that the author made in the second publication of the collection Ženy (1946) had a direct impact on the poetics of the texts and in turn also influenced the literary-historical reception of the collection – a fact that is most visible in cases in which the scholars only worked with the second edition.
The study shows how the body was conceptualized from a theoretical point of view, how it was classified, normalized, disciplined and how the struggles for its liberation took place, argues why it is (not) necessary to talk about the female body, points to certain intersections between anthropology and feminist theory. The main purpose of the text is to capture how the feminist understanding of the female body and corporeality developed, to point out the main points of the "reversal" that fundamentally influenced feminist thinking and at the same time to give space to less visible feminist discourse – all with an emphasis on the Slovak home environment. It also points out that the thinking about the body and the corporeality is firmly linked to the idea of gender as the central theoretical concept of feminism, on the one hand and the "woman" on the other, as a subject of feminist politics. It is the female body and corporeality that largely reflects the gap between feminist theory (thinking) and practice (politics). In the first part of the thesis the study will provide a theoretical insight into the research of the (female) body and corporeality from a feminist perspective. The themes/subjects/motifs of body and corporeality have been at the centre of feminist debates since the beginning, from Simone de Beauvoir's philosophical considerations to Judith Butler. They also play an integral part of past and present ethnological and anthropological research, which has reflected the diverse socio-cultural meanings of the body, often in the context of gender and sexuality. The development of anthropological thinking has largely shaped the conflict between social and biological determinism. In contrast to the dominant poststructuralist discourse in academic feminism, the study in the next chapters of the thesis from an ethnological perspective will focus on various forms of the struggle of the current feminist movement for female bodies, focusing on the Slovak context, under the slogan "my body, my choice".
The paper strives to introduce core concepts of feminism and the style of feminist thinking, perceiving and being in the world using academic literature, domestic knowledge, experience, and pop culture references. It then discusses the feminist critique of the law to show how feminist methodology/methodologies with the (quest for) vigilance, solidarity, recognition of positionality and anti-essentialism provide new perspectives, prospective Copernican turns, on the legal institutions, legal academia and the law per se. One of the prime examples nowadays topical in the Slovak Republic is the proposed redefinition of rape from violence based to consent-based. Thirdly, the paper sketches the various streams of feminist jurisprudence and how they interact.
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