Ewa Majewska: ‘Feminism is about difficult a society wherein there are privileged and underprivileged individuals’

Ewa Majewska is a Polish feminist, activist and thinker. She works on the SWPS College in Warsaw and is the creator of Feminist Anti-Fascism, Counterpublics of the Frequent (Verso Books writer, 2021). She was interviewed on the sidelines of the Worldwide Marxist Feminist Convention which happened in Warsaw final November.

Cross-border Talks: What do you assume feminism is right this moment and what are its most necessary duties?

Ewa Majewska: I believe the preferred notion of feminism truly has rather a lot to do with equality between women and men. It’s a liberal notion that implies that the feminist mission will probably be completed when girls have the standing of males. That could be a misunderstanding of feminists. It is the one I am actually not pleased with as a result of I believe it’s totally reductionist. Actual feminism, or the feminism that I am pleased with and that I need to promote, is a idea and in addition a apply of political company that begins from the expertise of being socialised and educated and rising up as a lady. We want this idea, apply and political company to grasp totally different variations of inequalities, totally different variations of discrimination, totally different alternate options to neoliberal capitalist patriarchy.

So for me feminism is rooted in a model of socially constructed expertise, embodied expertise wherein individuals study to be second-class human beings and wherein they construct their emancipatory claims. So for me, feminism is not only lowered to problems with men-women or masculinity-femininity. It’s extra about difficult a model of society wherein there are privileged and underprivileged individuals, wherein “the pure order” is seen as one thing hierarchical, wherein some model of chief or God is on the prime, after which there are women and men and slaves, or people who find themselves underprivileged, or people who find themselves discriminated towards for different causes, comparable to sexual orientation, class, faith or ethnicity.

For me, feminism is a reasonably broad doctrine. I am not afraid of claiming it is a large ideology. It is a large idea that begins with the embodied and socially constructed expertise of femininity. However then it goes a lot additional and consists of the expertise of different discriminated types of life. It builds utopias or alternate options that problem the established order. A giant a part of feminism can be criticism of the present society. And self-criticism. I believe that is one thing that Bell Hooks, one among my favorite feminist writers, has stated many occasions: that feminism generally has this wonderful skill, which at occasions turns into an impediment, to be overly important of itself.

Feminism is the social motion and the speculation that’s in all probability essentially the most self-critical of all political positions, theories and types of activism. And that’s good, as a result of it signifies that we try to alter our theoretical place, our political calls for, our types of activism, our types of being. And we are inclined to attempt to see the issue on our aspect as properly, not simply of whoever is being criticised or contested.

For me, feminism is an effort to construct an egalitarian society pushed by solidarity and altruism reasonably than competitors and battle. I do not assume now we have to get rid of battle from our worldview. I believe feminists can very properly be dialectical or Marxist. However I believe a sure idealistic model of society can be one wherein these conflicts are resolved respectfully and with care for everybody.

“Feminisms are feminisms. They develop out of a rejection of inequality, the oppression and discrimination of ladies, the remedy of ladies as a useful resource”

That will be the distinction between my imaginative and prescient of feminism and the liberal imaginative and prescient of feminism, wherein we give attention to people and their rights reasonably than on individuals’s social make-up. The model of feminism that I assist additionally has robust financial claims and could be very a lot at odds with neoliberal economics. So I believe that competition-based economics, which is predicated on the thought of instant revenue and which upholds the unequal division of labour and earnings, is totally at odds with feminism.

I’ve to stress that quite a lot of what for me is the feminist battle teaches us to embrace different struggles, together with the struggles of trans and non-binary individuals. I do not perceive how people who find themselves in any approach towards trans and non-binary individuals can name themselves feminists. I believe that goes towards the core assumption, which is that being discriminated towards and oppressed due to one’s identification is mistaken.

What do you count on to occur in Poland after the elections, by way of girls’s rights? 

Within the subsequent three or 4 months we will see quite a lot of preventing, quite a lot of negotiations and quite a lot of efforts to bribe totally different individuals, to persuade them to alter their political positions. However I even have one other expectation. What I simply described was a really concrete imaginative and prescient of the political manoeuvres that is likely to be to come back. However there may be one other factor that is essential in relation to the election outcomes. I and plenty of feminist buddies right here in Poland share the expertise of waking up in a special nation. And that is extraordinarily necessary, as a result of for the final eight years we have been dwelling in a rustic ruled by two variations of what I might name a state of exception.

On the one hand, we had quite a lot of fascist insurance policies and political selections that have been taken principally day-after-day. We had the Polish-Belarusian border points and the atrocities on that border towards racialised refugees. We had not solely anti-feminist, however principally anti-women laws, aiming for a better ban on abortion than the one which already existed. We had anti-LGBTQI+ declarations, statements and efforts to alter the regulation. We had very tragic moments round work.

We had individuals dying within the office due to exhaustion. So, for instance, we had medical doctors and nurses dying in the middle of their work. We had at the very least one employee at Amazon who died of exhaustion through the Covid interval. The federal government didn’t intervene very a lot in these conditions. Mainly we had this state of exception, this case of treating sure classes of individuals as enemies, as lower than human. However we additionally suffered from what I name this state of exception, which consists of being always provoked by political selections and statements that trigger very intense and really troublesome feelings, comparable to worry, anger and anxiousness.

We have been dwelling like this for eight years. Anybody with a progressive place and mindset awoke day-after-day to new atrocities and new hate speech unleashed by the federal government. The most important distinction now, after the election, is that we do not get up with this nagging feeling of hysteria, of worry, of some new unacceptable political resolution or scenario that now we have to face and act towards. So we’re exhausted after eight years of protesting towards every little thing: for ladies, for homosexual rights, for refugees, for employees. All these struggles have been every day, very intense. So I might say we’re on the opposition aspect, and right here I do not make a lot of a distinction between the left and the liberals, as a result of many liberals have been genuinely busy criticising the conservative authorities as properly. We’re exhausted.

Proper now, on the one hand, we will see quite a lot of amusing happenings on the political scene. However alternatively, at the very least we do not have that exhaustion, that anger, that worry every day in our emotional life. That could be a incredible change.  

In September 2022, we noticed the outbreak of main protests in Iran which have been about feminist struggles and towards strict controls. Is there an Islamic feminism? Is it the identical form of feminism that we see within the West, or are another international locations making their feminist battle totally different by way of company?

I wish to make two feedback about the best way you ask this query. One is that you’re very delicate in describing the scenario in Iran. I consider that what girls and their allies have been scuffling with in Iran since final 12 months, since September final 12 months, was truly a genocide towards girls.

It was not about working circumstances or hairdressing or something like that. It was truly the energetic efforts of the Iranian state to erase girls, principally to kill girls. So the scenario was way more dramatic than it was described. I make this remark in order that we will transfer on with a barely altered notion, as a result of I might not cut back the protest in Iran to hairstyles or schooling or girls’s rights in that delicate approach. I would say it was the best to reside as a lady that was at stake there.

And one other factor is that I discover it very problematic to speak about Islamic feminism, as a result of if we need to speak about Islamic feminism, we even have to speak about Catholic feminism or atheist feminism. We might be dividing feminism into non secular, regional or cultural contexts, one thing to be prevented. We do not speak a lot about European feminism, for instance, primarily as a result of it is perceived to be so various. There’s feminist literature, together with a complete postmodern selection.

So I am fairly towards being open to the thought of Islamic feminism, as a result of within the international locations which might be thought of Islamic, now we have Marxists, now we have postmodernists, now we have traditionalists. , feminisms are feminisms. They aren’t influenced by the cultural context alone. They develop out of a rejection of inequality, the oppression and discrimination of ladies, the remedy of ladies as a useful resource, as a supply of unpaid and invisible labour, as a supply of reproductive energy. And this battle could be very related in Poland, in Iran, within the USA, in Brazil, in every single place. So for me, the very idea of Islamic feminism is an concept that comes from Europe, an concept that’s primarily based on our try to grasp the world regionally. And I do not assume that is one of the simplest ways of trying on the world.

So I might speak about girls in Iran, or feminists in Iran, however I would not name them Islamic feminists, as a result of they is likely to be towards Islam, or they may need to protect a sure model of Islam, however on the identical time they may need to promote Marxist economics, for instance.

On this area that’s perceived as Islamic, now we have Rojava girls, now we have Palestinian girls, now we have Iranian girls. We have now girls in Iraq and Afghanistan who’re constructing barely totally different variations of feminism. However what unites them is just not Islam. That’s not the primary situation for feminists. Nowhere, not even in international locations the place Islam is the most important faith, is it the most important situation. Their fundamental concern is at all times the scenario and the place of ladies but in addition of all these areas of tradition, of society, of the economic system which might be perceived as female: social copy, invisible work, the care sector and different areas the place what’s perceived as culturally female is concurrently abused and discriminated towards.

And I believe that in Islamic areas of the world, as in every single place else on this planet, girls have very totally different solutions to those issues. What I like concerning the girls in Islamic international locations who’re preventing for rights and equality and for feminism is that they’re amazingly courageous. The braveness to be a feminist in these elements of the world, it truly is wonderful. So maybe that may be the one distinction that I see.

The complete model of this interview on Crossbordertalks