Lizzy Shramko

Time Binds: Queer Temporalities, Queer Histories

alicia — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 12:00:00 +0000

Historiography and corporeality have challenged queer theorists, or perhaps more accurately, have been fiercely challenged by queer theorists. From deconstructive viewpoints that question physicality as such, to radical disavowals of any belonging to historical legacies, the transcendental tendencies of queer thought have not come without their casualties.

In her most recent addition to the burgeoning queer theory bookshelves, Elizabeth Freeman tackles both historiography and corporeality head on. With her feet firmly rooted in historical instances, Freeman delves into queer familial structures, temporal gender performativity and (perhaps most provocatively) racial legacies of sadomasochism. Freeman eloquently challenges heteronormative teleologies, but not through deconstrunctionism or transcendence alone; instead, she lays claim to the possibilities of queer temporalities and histories.

Coining terms like erotohistoriography, temporal drag, and chrononormativity Freeman’s queer resistance is embodied in the new temporalities and chronologies that she lays out. Her refashioning of historiography is not only deeply experiential, but it is embodied as well—two strands of thought that has troubled feminist and queer thought alike for decades. More than this, in the same way Audre Lorde theorized about the potentialities of erotics, Freeman re-envisions the political potential of the historical as experienced through eroticism. She moves beyond shame and loss as traditionally explored in queer theory: Freeman’s history is one of carnal enjoyment, enjoyment that does not foreclose racial histories of pain.

Her insistence on addressing both corporeality and experientiality is most stimulating in her chapter on sadomasochism. In this chapter she criticizes queer theory’s inability to adequately unpack the racial baggage of S&M practiced and theorized in the queer community. In this chapter she outlines new ways of theorizing Marquis de Sade through Isaac Julien’s film The Attendant. The film features interracial S&M encounters between two men who engage in deeply historical play that replicates chattel slavery, and occurs in a deeply historical space, the art museum.

Yet another move that Freeman masters as an historian herself is her ability to renegotiate the value placed on historical texts. She gracefully moves between more canonized works like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Virginia Woolf’s Orlando (both literary works), to Cecilia Dougherty’s Coal Miner’s Daughter and Elizabeth Subrin’s Shulie (both video pieces). In this chapter she uses Isaac Julien’s film to access Marquis de Sade, not the other way around. In doing so she successfully restructures which texts shape her historiographies: minor visual works by lesser known authors occupy the foreground of Freeman’s discussion.

This is queer theory at its best: imaginative and troubling while remaining entrenched in lived (a)historical experiences. In Time Binds, Elizabeth Freeman finds herself among the ranks of queer theorists like José Esteban Muñoz, David L. Eng and Jasbir K. Puar. Without cleansing their hands of the complicatedness of history’s racial legacies, these theorists explore the messiness of queerness. This theory is centered on queer time and queer history’s exciting and, at times, (corporeally) violent moments.

As she herself explains when closing her remarks on S&M’s deeply racial historical potentialities, “These are not, to be sure, reparations for past damages (as if the perfect redress were possible), or the means of transcending all limitations. They are, however, ways of knowing history to which queers might make fierce claim.” Fierce, indeed.

Written by: Lizzy Shramko, February 4th 2011

Women's History Has Many Points of View

mandy — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 08:00:00 +0000

Interview with RE/VISIONIST

With the question "who gets to write history?" at its center, RE/VISIONIST is an online publication started by a handful of graduate students at Sarah Lawrence College who study women's history. Many historians push to catalog the discipline of history as a pure science, but this group is instead interested in critiquing the supposed objectivity of their discipline, and giving credence to subjective perspectives. Even more, the editors aim to analyze history through the lens of multiple feminisms. I opened a dialogue with one of the editors of RE/VISIONIST, and in true feminist style, she responded to my questions by conducting a roundtable discussion amongst the staff.

How did RE/VISIONIST come about?

Thea Michailides: Sarah Lawrence has a creative, vocal, and lively undergraduate community but—outside of the writing program—there really wasn't a space for graduate students to exchange ideas and feature our work. Roz's idea of establishing a blog or online journal gave us the opportunity to put what we were learning in the classroom to practical use.

Roz Hunter: As students, RE/VISIONIST offers us the opportunity to use an historical lens to examine contemporary issues and serves as an outlet to discuss how gender plays out today. We come from a multitude of educational backgrounds—including Women's Studies, Anthropology, English Literature, Political Science, and Fine Arts—and we aim for an interdisciplinary approach to current events.

Kate Wadkins: I find myself surrounded by a lot of entrepreneurial women who are pursuing their dreams of creative and scholarly work. For a long time, I wished I had access to some kind of publication to pull all this work together. RE/VISIONIST provides a resource for feminist voices.

What pnline spaces embody aspects of what you are trying to achieve?

Nydia Swaby: Racialicious is definitely an example of the kind of work we want to be doing. I also like Paradigm Shift; their tag line—"Use the 'F' word. Discuss. Evolve. Grow with Us. Change NYC. Change the World."—made me feel powerful, and I really enjoy their blog. Equal Writes, which was started by a group of students at Princeton, aims to do something similar to the work we do in saying that Feminism is not a dirty word.

Your publication features issues you see as absent from the larger discourse on women or feminism. How are you attempting to revise, revisit, or re-imagine the historical and contemporary issues you write about?

Nydia: We are reclaiming the notion of revising history not because we want to erase the things that happened in the past, but because we want to build on them. The name was inspired, in part, by a course that all first-year Women’s History Graduate students are required to take at Sarah Lawrence called "Visions/Revisions: Issues in US Women's History.”

Victoria Sollecito: Right, it was an historiography course, and it really pushed us to think about how history gets written and why and by whom and how it changes over time. So revisionist is a dirty word and feminist is a dirty word and we are both! How awesome is that? And we are using feminism as a framework for this re-visioning of history and culture and the media and politics and everything else.

Roz: The discipline of women's history aims to create a re/vision of the past and tell the stories of groups who have been written out of history books. Women's history can serve as a tool to uncover the lost social histories of remarkable individuals and groups who have been previously ignored. We believe that you cannot study history without critically analyzing the roles race, gender, sexuality, religion, ability, age, and class have played, and still play, in it. We strive to make sense of the social hierarchies that have and do exist, and how complex systems of domination (whether it be male domination, racial domination, or class domination) all work together to continue to oppress and marginalize. We aim to uncover lost histories.

Nydia: I became interested in writing about Amy Ashwood Garvey because it really shocked me that she was such an integral part of the Pan-African movement (many have suggested that she was the co-founder of the United Negro Improvement Association), yet you hardly ever find references to her in history books. Writing about her work seemed fitting for RE/VISIONIST because we aim to uncover these kinds of lost histories.

Kate: An exciting discovery I had was reading an excerpt from bell hooks' Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center where she describes challenging the notion of gender-as-the-ultimate-oppression by radical women of color and their White allies as "the basis of revisionist feminist theory." Reading this crucial starting point for intersectional feminist theory as revisionist was both inspiring and solidifying for our mission.

What you think about the term feminism? Is it an important term to use, to interrogate, to dismantle, to celebrate?

Roz: Many of our staff writers and contributors are wary of the term. We do celebrate the word, but we purposely pluralize it in our mission statement. It is very common to hear (White) women criticize the younger generation for not embracing the term, but we have many reasons to reject it. Feminism has had a history of exclusion and many feminist writings, speakers, and activists have used feminism to reinforce the status quo of race and class oppression. Feminism has often meant the promotion of the rights of White women at the expense of the rights of people of color, immigrants, queers, and the poor. We recently posted a quote from Barbara Smith that articulates some of our thoughts on feminism:

Feminism is the political theory and practice that struggles to free all women: women of color, working class women, poor women, disabled women, lesbians, old women—as well as white economically privileged, heterosexual women. Anything less than this vision of total freedom is not feminism but merely female self-aggrandizement.

Thea: The word feminism is important to preserve even though it has the power to be both divisive and galvanizing depending on the characteristics of the audience. I see feminism as a tool for unifying women in an era that encourages individuals to focus on relationships with those who share their unique experiences of oppression along—for example—racial, ethnic, and generational lines. This tactic may aid in revealing spaces where history has been negligent, but it also undermines the potential for unity. Women need to seek appreciation for their shared experiences while learning about those that are specific to their contexts. Feminism, as a word and an idea, offers a means for describing this coalition of sorts.

How do you overcome the exclusionary aspects of academic discourse?

Victoria: We want to move away from a definition of history that restricts the writing of history to senior tenured faculty members in history departments and restricts the subjects of history to dates of battles and the lives of the presidents. It isn't that those things aren't important; it's just that we feel like a twenty-first century visual artist's reflections on gender norms and expectations about sexuality are as important as any textbook.

Kate: Pop culture has its claws on the emerging minds of youth, as well as our psychic selves, and if we don't recognize its importance, we're just limiting our critique. This is a problem that exists in history, in pop culture, and in our lived experience—hence our aim to discuss all of those arenas and not privilege one.

Thea: We cannot avoid that we are engaged in the academic world and are, therefore, privileged no matter how vigilantly we may examine our work and the work of others in RE/VISIONIST. I feel our aim should be to recognize that, even as we try to illuminate the people and experiences traditional history has overlooked, we too are a part of an elite and, as such, may perpetrate similar acts of negligence.

Photo credit: Nydia Swaby

Written by: Lizzy Shramko, November 27th 2010

Arm the Spirit: A Woman’s Journey Underground and Back

admin — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 09:18:00 +0000

By Diana Block

AK Press

Upon finishing the initial chapters of the memoir Arm the Spirit, I was caught off guard by how different the experiences of Diana Block were from my own. Written from her memories of participating in revolutionary movements and subsequently shifting to life underground, Block’s stories did not reflect the political landscape that I am familiar with today. Her descriptions of fleeing the FBI and assuming new identities like changes in clothing brought to mind Giaconda Belli’s writings about the Sandinistas in Nicaragua more so than contemporary American feminist writers. But as I dove farther into the book, Block slowly bridged the gap between her political experiences and my understanding of political activism.

Throughout the course of the book Block artfully maps out the shifting political landscape over the course of several decades, infusing political theory with her lived experience as a mother, wife, activist and woman. Her narrative is saturated with historical information, and her memories forced me to come to terms with the fact that perhaps I am not living in what I would like to imagine as the “land of the free.”

Beginning with her initial experiences with radical organizing as a young woman fresh out of college, and expanding slowly into her participation in the Weather Underground, Block allows the reader a window into the revolutionary struggles that are mythologized today. Block weaves in her experience as woman, including her critiques and personal experiences, in a way that makes the political real; this blurring between the personal and the political is precisely what makes Block’s memoir so powerful.

Throughout most of the book Block recalls her experiences living underground with several other political allies, a move she made after discovering a bug placed in her vehicle by the FBI. Her association with anti-colonial revolutionary groups made her a target and, as a result, her life and the life of her baby son were irrevocably changed. Hyper-aware of how vulnerable their visibility was, Block and her partner (who was also living underground) were required to play heteronormative house in order to ensure their invisibility, an emotionally burdensome task that Block conveys through poetry interspersed in her narrative. Despite the difficulties that Block faced in life underground, her descriptions of the political prisoners suffering painful interrogations and long sentences with no access to family or loved ones, remind us of what she escaped through living underground. In fact, perhaps the initial shock I experienced when reading Arm the Spirit was not because Block’s narrative did not resonate with my life, but because it was difficult to accept that I was living in the same country that Block described. The thought of living in a nation that not only internally incarcerates people (men of color disproportionately so) at a ghastly rate, but one that is actively engaged in a war that serves neo-colonial purposes is a paralyzing realization.

Arm the Spirit serves to remind us of the political realities that we are faced with and of the dangers of apathy. Block’s narrative paints a picture of a world filled with suffering, but conversely one in which people are motivated to change the course of things. This narrative presents us with an empowering vision of the past that can hopefully resonate with the political and the personal landscape today.

Written by: Lizzy Shramko, July 14th 2009

Statistical Panic: Cultural Politics and the Poetics of Emotions

admin — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 09:28:00 +0000

By Kathleen Woodward

Duke University Press

When I finished Statistical Panic I was left mulling over the ideas presented in the book for the next few days. A deeply theoretical exploration of the emotional landscape, Kathleen Woodward frames her book in American culture over the past fifty years, revealing the political, social, and cultural power that emotions have in our lives. She argues that emotions are largely undervalued in the social sciences, and that conveying emotional experiences can be a powerful form of communication, organizing and socializing.

An avid reader, Woodward allows personal narratives to help her navigate this exploration. Joan Didion, Toni Morrison, Virginia Woolf, and many other writers infuse Woodward’s theory with personal experience and literary sensibility that bring her text to life. Woodward also does an impeccable job of mapping out emotional outlets in the media from tabloids to politics and, in doing so, we begin to see why her incorporation of narratives allows for a more thorough conveyance of emotions in our media driven world.

Statistical Panic offers a thorough examination of the political aspects of emotions, something that contrasts with twenty-four-hour news cycles, Twitter, and other media outlets that rely on shock and the quick turnover of emotional response. From shame to compassion, Woodward’s analysis bridges the emotional with the social and political, critically assessing emotions in a way validates their importance. Using Freud and Virginia Woolf, Woodward scrutinizes anger. She ties this to the social implications of experiencing anger as a woman and moves into a discussion on the uses of anger in feminist writings. Jean-Paul Sartre and Toni Morrison help guide Woodward’s understanding of shame and how it operates in a society wrought with sexism and racism. Part of what makes _Statistical Panic _such a powerful read is Woodward’s insistence on including “experts” like Sartre and Freud, while at the same time refusing to examine emotions in the vacuum of white male privilege. As a result, the scope of Woodward’s work is immense, offering the reader an enormous wealth of theory, social analysis and of course, literature.

When Woodward’s analysis moves to the political realm we begin to understand the tangible consequences of what she calls “statistical panic,” and how this has legislative and bureaucratic repercussions. First Woodward discusses compassion, both analyzing liberal guilt and compassionate conservatism (something the George W. Bush familiarized the nation with) as tools of organizing. Woodward also covers bureaucratic rage, a growing phenomenon due to the horrendous state of health care and finally, statistical panic, a feeling that Americans have been inundated with over the past fifty years, and even more so since September 11th.

Statistical Panic offers a critical exploration of emotions, how they are used for political gain, how they normatively reinforce social inequality, and how their subversion can combat the same inequalities. Woodward offers emotions as a source of political and social mobility, and her writing challenges us to be critical of the way statistical panic is used. She urges us complicate our understanding of our own emotional responses to everything from personal relationships to Twitter feeds.

Written by: Lizzy Shramko, July 13th 2009

What Kind of Liberation?: Women and the Occupation of Iraq

admin — Fri, 15 May 2009 17:29:00 +0000

By Nadje Al-Ali, Nicola Pratt

University of California Press

March 20, 2009 marked the six-year anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. Although the half a dozen years of occupation must seem like an extended nightmare from which Iraqis are anxious to awake, for many young Americans an occupied Iraq is the only Iraq they have ever known. This is precisely why Nadje Al-Ali and Nicola Pratt’s research could not have come at a better time. What Kind of Liberation? offers a revolutionary perspective on the war that has come to define a generation, using a gendered analysis that factors in women’s historical participation in Iraqi society, attempting to separate it from the one-dimensional warzone it is known as to many Americans today.

In the tradition of colonialism, the U.S. initially engaged in the war under the guise of freedom, campaigning specifically for women’s liberation. Tragically the manipulation of women’s interests as a strategic element of the occupation transformed women’s bodies into the location of a cultural war between the growing number of Iraqi insurgents, politicians and citizens opposed to the war, and an American administration that pushed women’s liberation as a Western cause.

Al-Ali and Pratt largely based their research on women in the Iraqi diaspora who had lived through, or who had family that lived through Saddam Hussein’s rule and the subsequent occupation of Iraq by the U.S. military. Their interviews reveal that despite the violence and tyranny implemented under Hussein, many of the interviewees imagined pre-invasion Iraq as a safer space for women. Although they do not attempt to sympathize with Hussein’s regime, they show that it was not until after the invasion, and after the U.S. spearheaded the campaign of the “liberation” of Iraqi women that women became the site for the rejection of Western values, and a return to conservative values was made on a nation-wide level.

What Kind of Liberation? presents us with a messy, complicated and living Iraq, a society with a rich history that is not streamlined. Iraqi women speak about their histories in their own words, offering a snapshot that largely contradicts what we see unfolding in the American media. Despite the U.S.’s promises for the future of Iraqi women, no investment was made in women’s interests when creating the new Iraqi government. Their voices were largely excluded. But these broken promises have not stopped female activists and politicians from braving threats and harassment and the backlash of a war in which they were used as part of a fictitious cause.

In the foreword Cynthia Enloe explains why Al-Ali and Pratt’s book is so necessary, “It’s happening. The country, the complex, dynamic society that is Iraq, is becoming ‘Iraq,’ just as the complex, dynamic society that is Vietnam has become merely ‘Vietnam.’” Nadje Al-Ali and Nicola Pratt’s gendered analysis of the war and historical documentation of women’s activism will contribute to the growing pool of knowledge that separates the orientalist notions of “Iraq” from the diverse and complicated country that has room for a future for men and women alike.

Written by: Lizzy Shramko, May 15th 2009

Ruins

admin — Wed, 13 May 2009 17:23:00 +0000

By Achy Obejas

Akashic Books

Upon reading Ruins, I was struck by the urgency of the content. Set in post-revolutionary Cuba the characters exist in a state of stagnant ideologies and hopes. Throughout the narrative Achy Obejas exposes a world that is startlingly familiar, one in which political values change according to the realities in which they exist. Obejas is an award-winning novelist and poet who translated Junot Diaz’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel into Spanish. A native of Havana, Obejas’ Cuba is both fantastic and forcefully real; this combination is precisely what makes her narrative so potent.

The protagonist of Ruins is a man who came of age during the Cuban Revolution in 1959. Usnavy has never let the patriotic ideals that were indoctrinated during youth escape his aging heart. Named both tragically and comically after the U.S. Navy ships moving in and out of the port of Havana, he has never been able to evade the “long shadow of the north” that haunts his life.

Usnavy lives in a dilapidated house with a wife and a daughter that have resorted to eating torn up carpet seasoned like meat in place of the real thing. Despite their real need for American currency, Usnavy refuses to participate in the growing dependence on the U.S. His dreams of Cuba’s past often conflict with his families hopes for the future. With more and more friends taking the dangerous journey to the shores of Miami, he does not merely give in. Usnavy fervently rejects the implication that America could hold anything greater than his beautiful revolutionary homeland.

Usnavy’s preoccupation with the past is manifested in his obsession with an antique lamp passed down to him from his deceased mother. The lone source of light in their otherwise dismal room, the lamp’s absurd garishness becomes a source of resentment for the two women in Usnavy’s life. Transfixed by the illuminated images of Africa created by the stained glass, he is content to live through the unpleasantries of life in post-revolution Cuba. It is not until the discovery of another lamp similar to his precious family heirloom that Usnavy begins to experience the desires that many of his fellow compañeros have expressed through their preoccupation with American wealth.

Obejas’ Ruins is full of contradictions that bring to light the complications of real life. She addresses the fluidity of values and ideologies when a young man returns from Miami as a woman, or when Usnavy’s role as caretaker is subverted when his wife’s resourcefulness saves the family. As time passes the hopes and dreams of a nation sway accordingly. Those who are lost in the past find themselves clinging to values that no longer hold the meaning they once did. Ultimately, Obejas reveals that political ideologies are as fluid as anything else, and they are not immune to the wearying effects of old age, a sentiment that resonates today.

Written by: Lizzy Shramko, May 13th 2009

2666

admin — Mon, 04 May 2009 10:16:00 +0000

By Roberto Bolaño

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Epic in its proportions, 2666 is a modern day mystery novel more akin to James Joyce than anything on the shelves by John Grisham. The five sections that comprise the book are set around the world, yet the heart of the narratives remains bound to the fictional Mexican border town of Santa Teresa. An industrialized hub, Santa Teresa is home to a multitude of maquiladoras whose workers are paid paltry sums compared to their American sisters directly across the border. An obvious portrait of Ciudad Juarez, Bolaño does not fail to leave out one vital detail. Throughout the book we are confronted with a string murders that exclusively target the women of Santa Teresa. It is clear that Bolaño is not only describing Ciudad Juarez, but he is boldly describing the femicide that has plagued the city for over a decade.

The novel opens with a group of European academics in search of their muse, Benno von Archimboldi. An elusive German writer, he is known only to his publisher. The scholars spend their days teaching his writing and attending conferences devoted to his work. Driven to find Archimboldi, their search brings them to Santa Teresa. It is here that they lose the trail, but they do not give up hope. “Archimboldi is here, and we’re here, and this is the closest we’ll ever be to him,” explains Pelletier, a French scholar who has devoted his life to Archimboldi. It is here that Bolaño reveals the nature of his beast. This town teetering on the brink of fiction and reality is the closest the reader will get to understanding the mystery that unfolds throughout the book. No matter how far Bolaño takes us away, it is to this town that we will eventually return.

Unique to other fictional tales that grapple with femicide, Bolaño does not mythologize the killings. Artfully, he creates a surreal world in which giants exist and wars rage on in castle-filled lands. But he handles the killings with a realistic integrity that enriches the text. The longest and most painfully poignant section titled “The Part about the Crimes” describes the killings and sexual abuses in detail, employing a style that stands apart. We learn the names of the women killed, and of the many more that remain unidentified, with family too far away or too scared to claim their lost daughters and sisters. Just as he does when the trail runs dry on Archimboldi, Bolaño leaves the reader with little closure. Some of the killers are found but most cases remain unsolved.

Written at the end of Bolaño’s life and published posthumously, 2666 is an expansive novel whose stories wildly unfurl leaving the reader with more questions than answers. At the close of the book the truth behind the mysteries remains elusive, however one thing is clear: the murders are not a fantastical portrait of society; rather they are an mercilessly truthful reflection of a world wrought with problems. In this respect the line between fiction and reality is appropriately steadfast in Bolaño’s profoundly affecting new novel.

Written by: Lizzy Shramko, May 4th 2009

Left Forum 2009 (4/17-4/19/2009)

admin — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 02:02:00 +0000

Pace University

New York, New York

Left Forum is an annual meeting of liberal intellectuals, academics, activists and students hosted by a New York City college or university. The conference is divided up into panels that take place in classrooms scattered across the campus. As I sat listening and astutely taking notes at the first panel I attended, a sudden feeling of nostalgia washed over me. I couldn’t help but feel transported back to my years as an undergraduate. Choosing panels was like choosing between courses. There was everything from “Long Term Strategies for the Left," to the more specific “The Challenge of Right-Wing Populism in Northern Core Capitalist Countries.” Like everything seemed in college, the choices were abundant.

Of the many panels I had the chance to attend, two in particular stood out. The first, “The Iraq War in Perspective” offered a dynamic spattering of writers, activists, and journalists who had been in and out of Iraq since the beginning of the U.S. occupation. Initially I was struck by the lack of an Iraqi presence on the panel: every one of the speakers was an American male, and with the exception of one, they were all white. This is something that Left Forum seems to struggle with: balancing elite academic ideologies with the actual people implicated in the theories. Despite this, the speakers offered what they experienced on the ground in Iraq, much of which is not reported through the U.S. media. Eight years after the launch of the invasion of Iraq, we are no closer to withdrawal than we were when we began; from the failure of the anti-war movement in America, to the foreshadowing of Obama’s foreign policies, the panelists painted a bleak portrait of the situation in Iraq, which is a picture you will not find on the front page of the New York Times.

The second panel, “The Culture Wars & Sexuality” grappled with the social and political restrictions on sexuality and identity politics. Betty Dodson—who is widely known as a sex educator, author, and artist—was effervescent. A witty woman in her eighties, she dominated much of the conversation with talk of the need for self-pleasure in sexual fulfillment. The panelists also spoke about Proposition 8 and raised serious questions about whether it should be a flagship cause in the gay rights movement. One of the most informative panelists, Bianca I. Laureano, worked with the sex-positive website Latino Sexuality, and was the first in the group to directly address the issue of race in the context of sexuality. It was refreshing to have a young, female panelist of color, and her experiences added exponentially to the dialogue.

Ultimately, the nostalgia I initially experienced persisted throughout the conference. This feeling was not just a result of physically being transported to a university; rather, it was the cocoon-like nature of Left Forum. From the communist publications being distributed at the front door to the inside leftist jokes about the implications of Obama’s foreign interactions, I felt as though I were in an intricately constructed liberal bubble. The attendees at the conference largely represented the fringes of political norms, but for a few days, surrounded by peers, they were in the center of a liberal terrarium.

Despite the institutionalized nature of such an academic gathering where certain voices go unheard, there was much to be gained. Having the opportunity to engage in dialogues with an array of highly respected academics, activists, intellectuals, and students is immeasurable. Many times those sitting in the audience next to me had just as much to offer as the panelists themselves and questions from the audience blossomed into beautiful diversions that would never exist outside of the surreal world of Left Forum.

Written by: Lizzy Shramko, April 26th 2009

God Has a Voice, She Speaks Through Me

admin — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 17:54:00 +0000

By CocoRosie

Touch and Go

You’ve probably noticed that Sierra and Bianca, the sisters who make up CocoRosie, are not the type to play coy when it comes to performing. Not only do their provocatively bright outfits and adventuresome vocals call attention to this fact, but the duo unapologetically evokes the name of the big "man" upstairs in the title of their latest single. And for the record, G-O-D is an S-H-E.

Known to many as folk musicians, the single God Has a Voice, She Speaks Through Me distances CocoRosie from comparisons to Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell. With well-timed synths and programmed beats, they have managed to move away from the muted whimsicality of their previous work into an energetically hip-hop inflected sound.

Despite their attempts to prove otherwise, the sisters are far from capricious. Lyrically, CocoRosie fails to add much depth to the ambitiously titled track, and somewhere after the second verse, the looped drumbeats and xylophone notes fall flat. With pop-a-licious drums and operatic vocals, CocoRosie is tapping into a formula that will undoubtedly force hipsters to move their feet to the beat, but a song with such an enthralling title needs to be more than just a whimsical dance number. Sure, God Has a Voice has a catchy hook, but it doesn't graduate beyond that.

I expected these dapper dames to turn the musical world on its head - not merely by pushing a feminist agenda, but through the creation of innovative music. In a world where the term feminism is shunned in popular culture, it is refreshing to find a couple of talented women unafraid to proclaim that God is a woman. However, when you manage to lose the poetry in subversity, are you really speaking out through your art? Or is it all a well-planned marketing ploy?

Written by: Lizzy Shramko, August 4th 2008