16 12 2000
Irina Aktuganova:
re: Andrea
Dear Andrea!
The problem is that we really are too different (I mean the participants
in this discussion).
Above all by age and life experience.
I quite have difficulties to explain myself to you Andrea and Jana.
After all there is a huge difference of age between us.
And my letter was rather based on an emotional and ontological experience
than on any theoretical sources and the sum of knowledge about the
political history of e.g. Russia or Germany.
Therefore, (or is it a problem of the language?) you have questions about
literally every paragraph.
But I have said what I wanted to say and there is nothing to decode.
Your try to read my letter through Larisa's text seems useless to me.
Larissa also has her own (not at all universal) experience and, as I
understand, a long period of live in the West.
First of all I and many others of the same age didn't have any inner
conflicts with the system.
And the so called "unserious" relationship to the regime and to oneself is
of another nature after all, which is culturological described not only
once.
Larissa and you Andrea also haven't understood right the motives for
becoming a cyberfeminist in Russia (in the letter by Mitrofanova there is
a reminder of this - that's closer).
This process was not at all connected with failures of realisation of
feminist politics in a non-democratic society.
And even more cyberfeminism is no escapism, no salvation in cyberspace.
I.e. you have absolutely missed the point.
You are developing keen insight and are asking with motherly melancholy:
""I would like to ask you (what I somehow can read in your letter): could
it
be, you simply have enough of dealing with and thinking about these
circumstances, and now you would like to go on a rather joyful way?""
I answer - no.
This can't be enough for me, because this is me, this is inseperable from
me since childhood, since that moment when I realized myself in this world.
And because I can't not be thinking of this.
Here is no choice - this is ontology.
But it happens that I have to think about how this way is being
constructed, in what way it is successful and whether I walk in circles
like that donkey.
""But an uncomfortable feeling remains from what you are writing about
your
fellow-country-women.""
And what am I writing spiteful about my fellow country women.
That we cannot allow a lot to ourselves.
So that is universal.
And then with the years I have developed serious suspicions that it
is neither neccessary to desperately strive to get to the way to liberation,
especially when you are connected with other people who depend on
you.
One can go on different ways, but it is better when your surroundings stay
alive and healthy.
What is incomprehensible hereby?
""And what do you mean by the word "chosen"?""
"Many called, but little are chosen" - that is what I have in mind. What
is incomprehensible about that for students, studying humanities?
And what is social and cultural capital doing here - when we are
talking about pure ontology, about the art to live and die.
"" ""In
Russia women traditionally are being ascribed the most breathtaking qualities
as courage, manlyness, noblemindedness, self-sacrifying, wisdom,
determination, avangardism etc.""
My first reaction: Are these so
good
qualities? Self-sacrificing never has been very useful for women. It
seems to me that an articulation of such qualities could motivate people
for other interests, e.g. nationalistic ones. Being a saviour or
eternally guilty, but never think of yourself or at least about what you
want yourself.""
Andrea, forgive me, but you must be a very young girl, still
using such a feminist rhetoric.
What we call self-sacrificing of course is not a bad quality.
Of course this word has a pitiful sound and unpleasant connotations, but
it is only a word.
Call it differently and transfer the accents.
Imagine that there is nothing sado-masochistic to it, it is love and joyful
responsibility.
And imagine at least motherly practice.
You understand?
Concerning the other qualities next to self-sacrificing (wisdom, courage,
noblemindedness) - give them other names, the sense will be the same.
Or do you doubt that?
And as it is ascribed to us by society, it is ascribed to
everybody.
And you yourself do not ascribe this to yourself?
Or will you do everything differently, God forgive, only not to fall into
the net of discrimination?
But that is also dependance.
When a young Moscow artist and young feminist was mounting her exhibition
in my gallery, she turned to me for help with her inner conflict:
She had had enough to install her installation by herself because she was not
very good at using carpenter tools.
But she had eagerly been sawing all by herself because as a feminist she
couldn't ask any men for help.
But when she understood that she almost ruined her work, she asked:
"Ira, what do you think, might a feminist ask a man to do such a "male"
work, and if she does, wouldn't that be feminist heresy?"
Andrea, what would you have answered her?
When I 12 years ago got married, the first thing I did was to take a
revision of all family "values".
In particular, I told my husband, who sat at the table awaiting
lunch, that he can get his own lunch, since he is not disabled and fully
able to help himself.
And so I was recapturing inch by inch.
And only two years ago I understood why my mother has served
food all her live to my father and my brother (and to me also) and is still doing this
today. It's just dawned on me:
that is how she has been expressing her love to us.
It is her language of love.
And no prescription, no gender role, no social construct and similar trash.
And it is not cyber-, because
cyberspace is unavoidable breaking into our lives, but because we bore
this space a long time, before it became a fact and an attribute of our
existence.
"These your thoughts about cyberfeminism were very interesting for me, as I
have a wholly different approach.
Are you also connecting this with art and with self-reflection and with
the specific situation of subculture or "informal community" in the last
years ot the Soviet Union?"
Dear Andrea, I am not connecting this with art at all and neither with the situation of subculture in the former USSR. I am connecting this concretely with my generation - those who are 35-45 - and our life circumstances. Partly it is what Sylvia Sasse has written about. It is an existential experience in general for the USSR and not connected with any affiliation to subcultures. Rather the other way around.
By the way, all this is on our site, and also in English. No wish to repeat oneself. I just add - cyber is what we brought with us from our Soviet childhood and youth, and feminism is a possible way to become oneself.
Kisses
Ira Aktuganova
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