12 12 2000
Larissa Lissjutkina:
re: (Translation from Russian)
Frechen/Koeln
Dear Andrea, dear Jana,
again I cannot decode your last text. In the window of my e-mail my
computer does not decode cyrillic at all, only in the programm Winword.
The best would be to send all files attached. On what success and failure
depend on, I don't know.
I could open your first letters, which you sent in August, without any
difficulties.
On your website my computer also does not open everything, only parts of
the texts.
The majority is appearing in a somehow strange alphabeth, like the Greek
one.
So I cannot follow the discussion entirely.
(Today is the second day of my letter, Tuesday the 12th of december. I
received another 5 letters this morning, and could open the letter by Jana
with the date: Mon, 11 Dec 2000 22:14:38+0100 MET, and by
Valentina Konstantinova who is seriously ill and is supposed to return to
the hospital today.
I think that the other letters were copies in another encoding, so I could
open them).
On the website I could read the quotation, by which you introduced me.
It's been such a long time that I have to comment on what I have said then.
Yes and in her letter from today Jana again is asking the eternal
question: what is feminism?
There are a lot of conviction which I wrote down at some time, but today I
do not agree with them anymore:
I changed my opinion, or the situation has really changed.
But this is not refering to my conviction about the civilizational
(sociocultural) character of the feminist project.
Even today I think that, on its way, feminism is not only questioning
single spheres and social structures, but also human history as a whole as
it has developed and is still developing.
In its radicality feminism is to compare with christianity.
It postulates other paradigms of community, morality, justice and law,
other nature philosophy, other antropology.
This fundamental claim on reality by feminism is being obscured by urgent
political jobs.
In her letter (the one where she talked about the idiotic word
cyberfeminism, unfortunately I don't have the letter she was answering to)
Jana has given lots of examples of urgent political and economical
problems, which women have to face, if they are disabled, lonely mothers,
materially unprotected, belonging to minorities, living in the Third
World, and so on.
These problems must be solved quickly, here and now, and this must happen
with political means.
The political project of feminism is lot more visible in society than the
civilisational.
Society is judging on feminism as a whole in its political appearance.
Maybe this is even better, because even this instrumental, partial aspect
of feminism still is making the biggest part of society panic, among them
also women.
But it is important for feminism itself not to suppress its own claims in
(self) conscience.
When I ten years ago wrote about the diverging of Russian and Western
feminism, I had in mind several aspects.
First:
In a concrete historical context of Russia the political system as a whole
as social institute and instrument was totally compromised by the Soviet
system, especially in the last part of its existence, when we faced the
agony of the system, transforming itself into a caricature of itself.
In the leninist-stalinist period the Soviet power kept alternately
insinutating enthusiasm, hope, fear together with the conviction of the
own historical superiority.
In the Brezhnev era the dominating tone was the carnival laughter.
I again turn the attention of the partakers of the discussion to the
letter by Jana, where she is writing about the socio-cultural significance
of the phenomenon of clownery, carnival, fool's freedom, persiflage.
Bravo, Jana!
In the context of the Russian history these significant figures,
strategies, phenomena are not marginal at all, on the contrary, they have
an enormous explanatory potential (here I also would add the phenomenon of
"yurodstvo" Narr in Christo).
With its help you can understand a lot bigger spectrum of the Russian
reality than with the help of the most serious and scientific
philosophical treatises.
Not by chance in Russia one of the most extensive and authoritative
conceptions of carnival culture has emerged thanks to M.M.Bakhtin.
Until today it seems to me that my fellow citizens have solved the problem
of inner conflict with the system by stopping to take serious themselves
and the system.
An alternative to the Soviet crazyness emerged from below, in the
appearance of subculture, alternative cultural niches and an alternative
lifestyle.
Part of this alternative context was the spontaneous women's solidarity,
sexual liberalness and the valuation of traditional female roles.
In the context of Soviet ideology this had an oppositional character and
was directed straightly against the political and ideological mainstream,
which instrumentalized the leftist political rhethoric and ideology of
emancipation.
For Russian women it was important to distantiate tehmselves from this
rhethoric as well as from the totally compromised political sphere as a
whole.
These motives were strangly complemented and mixed up with the need to
accumulate what one has missed because of the Soviet need of keeping up
(Nachholbedarf; i.o. German).
In a concern of value and world view one can criticize and judge such a
social situation in whatever way,
but it gave the chance to create female Networks (i.o.
English) from below and to change gender roles by sociocultural and
NOT by political mechanisms.
I have in mind the process which is typological similar to the one Max
Weber has written about, analyzing cultural, economical, politological and
ideological consequences of the Reformation.
Please understand me right: I merely have in mind the mechanisms, and not
the concrete result in the appearance of the Western capitalist society.
The potential of this unique Russian situation in the women's movement
exhausted itself very quickly and never has been realized.
Today I suppose that Russian women do not have anywhere to go, they have
to under go the long way through political institutions, have to learn to
articulate their own claims in the political system and to use political
mechanisms for their own interests.
The first try - the movement of the "Women of Russia" (an electoral alliance at the elections
of 1993, part of which was the successor organization of the "Commitee of Soviet Women", the only
official women's organozation in the USSR; baba_yaga)
- turned out to be
unsuccessful.
In my opinion this happened, because - being in the frame of a tough
parliamentary system, i.e. a political institution par exellence - the
women a given time kept on thinking and acting in sociocultural terms
because of some inertia/lethargy, which at the given place was absolutely
wrong.
When they woke up and politicised in an adequate measure, their political
bonus was lost.
Too bad, but this is not the last word.
Disregarding its youth, the new Russian political system is already
demonstrating all symptoms of the agony, to which the old Soviet system
ripened 70 years altogether.
The Russian political scene is again demonstrating all known qualities of
a carnival situation:
a quick changing of masked subjects, which one cannot take seriuosly, be
they presidents, oligarchs or opponents;
the ongoing exchange of positions from above or below; the throwing of
excrements on each other (see electoral strategies).
To make a successful feminist politics is agonizingly hard in a society
where practically no democratic subjects exist.
In such a society the run into cyberspace (i.o. English) is a
welcome and blessed reliev.
If I would live in Russia now, I probably also would say with joy that I
am a cyberfeminist, and if in Russian this word sounds idiotic, even
better.
Because I do not know what subjects and mechanisms to rely on today.
To Valya Konstantinova: dear Valya, right now you are thinking over the
steps of your activity of the last ten years. Your opinions asa person
with practical experience is more interesting for me than theoretical
speculations.
If you have the power to write with us, then I ask you to say what you
think of that period, since I have been writing about the last ten years
as well. From my heart I wish you to get straight with chemotherapy, to
recover and to begin a new period in your biography. Hold on!
Larissa Lissjutkina
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