GENDER IDEOLOGY: AN ANALYSIS OF ITS DISPUTED MEANINGS

In the last few years, a number of genealogical studies have been published about recent historical processes that enabled the emergence of the discourse on “gender ideology” as a “weapon in the culture war.” As some of these studies suggest, what is at stake is an alternative project of knowledge and truth production. Little or no attention, however, has been given to the meanings of gender ideology internal to feminist and gender theories. Rejecting the idea that gender ideology can be reduced to a straw man produced by a conservative agenda, I propose a brief history of ideas associated with the concept, foregrounding the work of sociologist Viola Klein, whose reflections on the sociology of knowledge represent one of the first academic investigations of gender ideology. In illustrating the plethora of meanings associated with the concept, I argue that they converge towards a radical negation of the anti-gender discourse of the global right.

Stories of the Prophets

Approaching the 1895 edition of the Bengali Kasasol Ambia that remains in a Broken Hill mosque as a history book, this chapter examines the historical storytelling techniques that this Sufi text employs. I argue that this particular non-modern history book was underpinned by a relationship between humans and knowledge – an epistemology - quite distinct to colonial modern methods of truth production. The chapter makes a methodological argument for animating and reinvigorating non-modern strategies for producing truths about the past and claims continuity to non-modern historiographical traditions.

Suspension: Repeating repetition!

This introduction to the thematic section about repetition deals with the question of why we need to rethink the relation between repetition and performing arts. We claim that it is precisely with repetition that contemporary performing arts circle their field and are inscribed in social discourses, capital mechanisms of the labour market and the mechanisms of truth production and knowledge deployment. By considering two traditional presuppositions about the connection between theatre and repetition, we unfold their problematic nature and show why it is necessary to – again – talk about repetition and performance. Continuing with the critique of the paradigm of authenticity and the idea of artistic positivism or vitalism, we show that today the connection between performance and repetition needs to be considered through a modern conception of repetition, articulated already by Kierkegaard, through which we need to grasp not only that repetition is inscribed in contemporary performance, but also that it is precisely with repetition that performing practices are inscribed in the social and thereby generate their political power.

Forced Confession as a Ritual of Sovereignty

Torture and confession are like ‘the dark twins’ as Foucault argued. Definitions of torture from the 3rd century to the 21st century indicate confession as its primary motive. Systematic use of torture and confession has also characterised the Turkish state’s policy in Diyarbakır Military Prison against the Kurdish prisoners in the early 1980s. The detainees and the prisoners were routinely forced to repent and confess regardless of their organisational links or the crimes attributed to them. Wide, systematic and routine use of forced confessions in the prison showed that the significance of confession policy in Diyarbakır prison does not arise from their truth status or their effectiveness in intelligence gathering, but from their truth-effects. Although intelligence gathering was one of the objectives of the regime, the policy of confession was used primarily to establish dominance over the accused and to discipline and control the prisoners and the Kurdish population. Drawing upon Foucault, I will further argue that forced production of confession functioned as a ritual of truth-production and subjectification binding the prisoner to the dominant regime of power and truth and transforming him into a docile and obedient subject.

From the Heart of Darkness: Critical Reading and Genuine Listening in Constructivist Norm Research

In their article on critical norm research, Stephan Engelkamp, Katharina Glaab, and Judith Renner propose a poststructuralist, hegemony-critical program. They contrast it with an affirmative mainstream in constructivist norm research, which they argue is oblivious to power, unreflective, and Eurocentric. Therefore, they make a case for a program that unmasks hegemonic values, reconstructs and strengthens non-Western, local values, and reflects more systematically on its own position in the process of truth production. We show based on three points that the proposed program is not fruitful for a truly “critical” form of norm research: (1) it distorts the weaknesses and achievements of constructivist norm research, (2) it rewards an unreflected use of the terms “Western” and “local,” and (3) it lacks the necessary instruments for subjecting political processes to normative reflection.