Just a little reminder of what it's all about...

http://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability.html

22 July

July 22 2011. With the kids at the public pool. Listening to the unbelievable unfolding in Oslo, then confused messages of shootings at a summer camp outside Oslo. How easily violence explodes security... The central paradox of democracy dismantled, through the killing of future politicians, actors of consolidation rather than change; the security you feel, the safety enjoyed, when being in a position, to take non-violent re/actions for granted. At some point democracy means that you forget that this is not necessarily something you should expect to take for granted—it gets dusty, not valued, no longer perceived as the most central aspect of being able to practice democracy. Only through the momentary and complete loss of security and safety are we reminded of the vulnerability of non-violent democracy. The every-day dustyness of democratic security and safety allows the hubris of extremism, allows distance to grow between people, allows isolation and exclusion to increase. We are all part of the crime, in different ways, unless we actively decide to practice democracy in our everyday encounters with each other—only if we constantly act to increase each others and our own security and safety, through the complete, unreserved and unconditional respect for every one will we be able to defend non-violent democratic values.

Traveling the times of violence

We have just watched yet another episode of the Time Team, one of our all time favourite TV shows. They were excavating a hilltop bronze age community with heavy defence works surrounding it, north of Belfast. Laying in the sofa watching the dark clouds travelling the stormy skies afterwards, waiting for the young one to fall asleep, I cannot help thinking of the disturbing question raised in the programme, and the shadows it throws over the last ten thousand years of human history. Why was such defence works necessary? Thomas Hobbes grins at me through the growing darkness of the falling summer night’s hurling rain. Just how peculiar are our present times at this particular spot on earth? The fact that I do not need to live behind bars, that my children can go to the park and play without guards or even adult company, that friends look a bit questioning at me when I say I don’t let my children go to the baths alone... For how long will this actually still be possible, for how long has it not even been a faint possible fantasy? 

I am completely and absolutely convinced that the human being is basically peaceful, but similarly convinced that she was utterly corrupted by the wealth made possible through agricultural accumulation. So corrupted, in-fact, that she needed to build defence works to protect her goods, both produced by her own sweat and tears and the sweat and tears taken by structural or direct violence from others—family, friends or enemies alike. 

I look at my children, and I see the vulnerability and sensitivity in them, I see the soft curves of their selves slowly and quite carefully being attempted formed by J and myself—into sensible, wise men choosing talk over knives. I wonder whether that would have been possible in more violent times and places. Have we ever seen less violent societies than those of Scandinavia today—despite the very real structural and direct violence actually happening here—since the Neolithic age? What would you tell me Thomas, would you say: ’Just you wait and see!’ Or would you scratch your beard wondering what you got wrong?

Living the post-patriarchal nightmare?

I agree—it feels like there's just too much "post" all around us. And now we're even seeing post post'ing, as in post postmodernism (or metamodernism...). I just looked it up, because I thought I need to know for sure there's not a hidden meaning in this prefix. But as I suspected there isn't. It means just plainly that which comes or happens just after something, as in postmodern or postcolonial. Why bother? Because I'm struggling with the women's equality issue. Please note that I'm NOT talking about gender equality. My problem is that it actually doesn't seem to be be about dismantling the patriarchal, but about a patriarchally defined and driven remodeling of what it means to be a women: from housewifery and mothering, to formal work and careering. Hence, what we see at the moment is not at all the freeing of women from home, bed, kitchen, but a kicking of them out in the male world of work, in which family life is perceived of as suffocation rather than as a re-creative part of life. I know I sound like a radical religious voice of opposition. That's not however my point of departure. Let me try and explain this in some more detail. 

We talk of the 1960's as the decade of revolutions, and most celebrated is the sexual revolution which has become directly connected to women's liberation (because we got the contraceptive pill freely distributed on the market, in the North as well as in the South—i.e. women could suddenly have sex without fearing pregnancy, consequently they could regulate their fertility without the knowledge of any one else than their physician). This is of course worth celebrating. No two words about that. However, it also liberated men from a sexual-reproductive responsibility, and removed the quite obvious excuse for refusing sex, on the part of women, i.e. that they didn't want sex because they were afraid of (yet another) pregnancy and birth. So, the sexual revolution might be seen as a revolution of men's interests in ready access to the women they have a relationship with. The major problem here is not the pill—it is about interests. The discourse surrounding modern (and postmodern!) sex is that it is always nice, however it is practiced as long as those involved consent to it. But what is consent? If anal sex is defined as 'not risky' in whose interests is this? When clean shaved vaginas are defined as OK (as long as you see to it not to get any cuts, or to use particular cleansing products to avoid infections), in whose interests is this defined so?

When you are told to postpone family-making till after you have secured a career, in whose interests is this advise? We may note that in the anglo-saxon tradition this is a particularly patriarchal practice with long and deep roots, not only among the nobility, but also among the working poor (see Jeffrey Weeks). Or , when we are told that prefab food is just as good for us as home cooked meals from fresh produce, in whose interest is it that you buy such prefab stuff? 

What kind of society would take the re-generation of us seriously? How would it look like? The focus would not be on working life, it would be on family. It would not be on the "right" to sex, but the gratefulness of being bestowed access to each others secrets. Focus would be on relational stability and mutual respect of interests and wishes. A focus on time as valuable, not in monetary, but in social terms. 

What we are living today is not a gender equal dream, but a post-patriarchal nightmare, in which the backlash into old-fashioned patriarchalism is imminent, and in which people who try hard to live as equals are forced on their knees, overburdened by juggling the demands on careering and re-generation.  

Om MadMen på svenska

This was written two years ago as my first reaction to the sitcom. The English comment below is actually a bit later. 

Jag tittar på Mad Men... Är det symptomatiskt att en serie av det slaget har skapats och slår igenom just nu? Den är på många sätt extremt olik de serier som annars kör på den globala sit com scenen. Den är långsam, varje tagning får lov att vila hos tittaren, inga snabba klipp, vackert komponerat. Scenerierna är perfekta urklipp ur historien. Min generations historia. Den handlar om femtio- och sextiotalisternas föräldrar. Om det som formade deras liv som unga vuxna, som unga föräldrar, om deras prestationsångest, deras moraliskt tveksamma beteenden i en tid då förr-nu-framtid bröts mot varandra, där preventivmedlen just hade börjat påverka och förändra sättet sexualiteten och därmed parförhållandet, en tid då den unga medelklasskvinnan tog klivet ut i arbetslivet och därmed skapade förutsättningarna för 1990talets globala jämställdhetspolitik, genom kvinnors ökade makt över den egna försörjningen—genom arbete.

Det har ofta sagts att kvinnors kontroll över den egna kroppen, dvs. rätten till en sexualitet (alltså den egna) och rätten att fatta reproduktiva beslut är det helt centrala i kvinnors frigörelse, inte bara i Nord, utan även i Syd. När man tittar på Mad Men kan man frästas att hålla med. Vi uppfattar kanske inte det underliggande meddelandet, i form av skillnaden mellan Don Drapers älskarinnor som personifierar friheten, Betty Draper och hennes livsångest som förstärks av att det flyttar in en frånskild kvinna med barn i ett grannhus—en kvinna som tydligen inte är nedslagen av denna sin tveksamma status—och kvinnorna på kontoret, som spelar och lär ut ’sjuksköterska-läkare’ spelet mycket skickligt. De är moderna, de är fria som kor på grönbete de första vårdagarna—rymlingar. Med mammor som kanske uppmuntrat dem, sätt till att de inte blev intagna hemmafruar liksom dem själva. De fnittrar, över lönerna, över sin egen frigjordhet, männens uppvaktande, sitt eget spel med männen. De erfarna vet att det inte är allvarligt, söker inte kärleken utan bara nöjet, medan den ‘nya’ går fel; hon bryter gångna tiders sextabun, förväxlar klumpig närgångenhet med kärlek, förblir honom ‘trogen’ i sitt flirtande med de övriga manliga kollegorna. Samtidigt sitter hemmafrun Betty fången i sin egen lycka—mannen, hans karriär, huset, barnen—och får kraftiga symptom på depression, utmattning, sammanbrott. Härdsmälta. Medan hon väntar lydigt och dygdigt på att maken skall komma hem efter jobbet eller efter en natt hos ‘älskarinnan’ som är så milslångt ifrån hemmafruidealet man nog kan komma: De är alla sig själva, ser bara till sig själva, är egensinniga, vägrar vara servicemaskiner. De har en relation med Don eller med andra för att de vill det, inte för att de har flirtats omkull.

Genom Mad Men blir det så tydligt att vi fortfarande befinner oss i loopen. Vi är fortfarande inne i den transformationsprocess som påbörjades under andra världskriget. Serien är inte som så många hävdar ett porträtt av 1960talet, det är ett porträtt av oss själva, i 60talskulisser. Vi lutar oss bekvämt tillbaka i TV-soffan och kollar in hur det var, skrattar åt och förfäras över hur människorna då behandlade varandra, och ser inte att vi inte har kommit så värst mycket längre på 50 år. Vi är kvar i samma hjulspår, inte bara vad det gäller genusrelationerna, utan även vad det gäller idealen och förhållandet till konsumtion. Hemmafrun kanske inte finns kvar, men idealet som förknippas med henne är det samma (t ex i inrednings- och renlighetskraven och i mödrandet) samtidigt som man skall ha en karriär, bete sig som en älskarinna, ha välartade och skol-lyckade barn, och en man som håller sig hemmavid och är jämställd. Alla Mad Men kvinnorna samlade i en enda idealkvinna, som dessutom skall vara lycklig, precis som Betty Draper borde vara... Är det konstigt att vi inte klarar av det, att vi drabbas av utmattningsdepressioner?

Serien är som en mardröm. Jag kan inte sova när jag har tittat på en episod, och upplever den som den ultimata skräckfilmen.

A little note on the EuroCrisis

The following interview with Umberto Eco—one of my absolute favourite writers—was published in The Guardian the other day (thanks Jens Rosbäck for the info). Umberto Eco in The Guardian

I have found that this crisis doesn’t worry me too much. The reason is probably that I have come to the conclusion that there will always be some crisis or another, it will have severe (or not so severe) consequences, but basically we will find a way of solving, maybe not the crisis but the effects of it. It’s like ecosystems; they are not destroyed, they change.

What does worry me however, is that I am not sure whether the politicians trying to solve it have analysed the situation from a historical perspective. If they do, they may realise that it is the second youngest democracies in Europe, which are cracking. This sends us an important message, i.e. that democracy means not only getting rid of a dictator or dictatorial rule, it means also a profound change in how politics is done, and a restructuring of private, local, regional and international economic relations. In other words, if we do not demand true democratisation of new (Eastern European) members of the Union, these will crack too in a few years time. Alas, a new maybe even worse crisis will emerge and be defined as a ‘surprise’.