O apartamento

Gosto desta casa. No outro dia, quando saí para jantar com umas amigas que já não via há muito tempo, uma delas perguntou-me se vivia sozinha. Ela já sabia que eu alugava um apartamento, mas queria confirmar que eu não estava a partilhar com ninguém. Confirmei. Então ela mostrou-me aquele lado dela que é e será sempre o completo oposto de mim, dizendo-me que nunca seria capaz de viver só. Eu disse-lhe que precisava muito da solidão, para me encontrar. Foi aí que me lembrei das nossas conversas, quando éramos as duas muito adolescentes e íamos sempre juntas para todo o lado, dos nossos planos de querermos viver sozinhas antes de nos casarmos. Não sabíamos nada do que nos esperava, mas já nos revoltávamos contra o que esperavam de nós. Revoltávamo-nos desta forma, jurando a pés juntos viver uns anos sozinhas, sem maridos nem filhos, e já empregadas, a ganhar dinheiro e independentes. Olho para esta casa e dou comigo a viver nela o meu plano adolescente. Tão longe da Sertã e do que eu era, mas perto do que eu queria ser.

Às vezes sinto que nunca parei de ser adolescente, e que o sou sempre mais e mais. Talvez porque nunca o fui como devia ter sido.

Colóquio Internacional Novas Cartas, Novas Cartografias: Reconfigurando Differenças no Mundo Globalizado

Em 1951 numa conferência em Nova Iorque um escritor de ficção científica chamado Theodore Sturgeon disse que “90% of everything is crap”: the remaining 10% of that is what we call good, and 10 percent of that – one story in a hundred – is really good. Com isto, estava a tentar dizer que a ficção científica era o único género literário que era constantemente avaliado mais pelos maus exemplos do que pelos melhores. É o que ficou conhecido como a Lei de Sturgeon. Algo de muito parecido acontece com o feminismo, que precisa de ser avaliado pelos seus melhores exemplos, e não pelos piores. 

O que me interessava fazer na conferência em Évora, onde estive nos últimos dias, não era tanto aplicar a lei de Sturgeon aos colectivos das Pussy Riot e Femen, coisa que poderia muito bem fazer, até porque há muito de "crappy" no que certas mulheres desses colectivos dizem (principalmente as Femen), mas antes pensar as consequências e as possibilidades abertas pela visibilidade excessiva do corpo feminino em luta na rua. Queria também debruçar-me sobre a questão do poder dos protestos na rua. Em Junho de 2012, eu não estava em Portugal, mas vi nascer, através da internet, o movimento social, “Que se Lixe a Troika! Queremos as nossas vidas!”, responsável pela organização de manifestações ou aparições gigantes, como a de 15 de Setembro de 2012, que levou um milhão de pessoas à rua em várias cidades portuguesas num protesto nacional contra as medidas de austeridade impostas pelo governo.  Ainda assim, como nota uma reportagem no jornal Público, “eram muitos os que, fora do protesto (de Outubro 2013), o via simplesmente passar: Manifestar-me para quê? O que é que muda?” 

Breves considerações alentejanas

A caminho de Évora, as cegonhas nos ninhos pareciam-se muito mais com avós do que com mães. E a verdura dos pinheiros mansos era consistente com a visão de cabeças penteadas pela cabeleireira da minha mãe, a Dona Dália. Pinheiros muito nineties. A viagem abria-se e trazia-me o mundo meridional, e eu entrava nele com um certo desprendimento e enlevo. Já em Évora, voltei a encontrar os dedos cravejados de anéis da Maria Teresa Horta, e vi como as suas mãos se despegavam do corpo e trotavam pela mesa do colóquio, por aí adiante até chegarem ao que era preciso recusar.

Agora estou aqui, e gosto de estar aqui, mesmo com os pinheiros, as cegonhas e os anéis trazidos. É bom regressar a casa depois de tudo isto.

"Lesbian Vertigo: Living the Women's Liberation Movement on the Edge of Europe"

As far as I know, I'm the only feminist nerd in my family. So when I went to Manchester it felt like I was opening my eyes for the first time. It was such a big thing for me. I started questioning the church, and the power of those who spoke inside it. I started remembering things. Like being asked to get up and get a fork for my brother at dinner, or being told to clean his room when we went to university, or being unable to acknowledge that I was a sexual being. And yes, I did go through my personal 1970s fit of glory, by taking my life and re-writing the story and changing the ending. When I found myself working with Hilary Owen I realised that, without having even planned it, this is where I wanted to be. I was happy, but of course I didn't feel happy. It was all very difficult and most of the time during my MA I felt miserable. The world as I had known it had disappeared, and I had to come to grips with this other world where I had a potential voice to use, if only courage didn't fail me. The truth is I couldn't disagree loud enough. I was often ashamed of writing articles and getting published on issues that I was unable to tackle with my closest family. I fell into the usual traps of transforming books about other women's experiences into mirrors for my own life. I also discovered another difficulty, which came attached to the situation of being supervised by a brilliant academic: being massively influenced by your mentor's ideas. As a PhD student, I didn't give this much thought, as I was young and naive, and I knew very little to the point of actually believing I was breaking totally new ground (Ha!) 

I'm now at a point where I think I know nothing. So the issue of influence was very much on my mind this summer, as I was writing a piece on Novas Cartas Portuguesas and Borderlands: La Frontera. These books had a huge impact on me as an MA student at Manchester in 2005. So what do you do when you feel massively influenced by your own mentor's readings? You just keep on writing, hoping that someday you'll eventually find your way. My article, "Lesbian Vertigo: Living the Women's Liberation Movement on the Edge of Europe" is a tribute to Hilary Owen, who introduced me to these two books 8 years ago. It's about the impact of feminist ideals on the different stories of canonisation of these books and it will come out in a book edited by Kristina Schulz.

The Marias of the Portuguese Communist Party

Despite its progressive political agenda, the Portuguese First Republic was an unstable period that brought political instability and social unrest, paving the way for the longest right-wing dictatorship in Europe, which lasted for 48 years (1933-1974). The rise to power of António de Oliveira Salazar, a right-wing economist and a Coimbra University professor turned dictator, made it more difficult to invoke the feminine independently of state propaganda. Salazar ruled Portugal between 1933 and 1968, following the 1926 coup which led to the creation of the New State. After reportedly falling from a chair and suffering a stroke, he was replaced by Marcelo Caetano in 1968, who stayed in power until the Portuguese “Carnation Revolution” of April 1974, which ended the dictatorship and the Colonial Wars in Africa. In this repressive context, the 1930s and 1940s witnessed the first great wave of female authored fiction in Portugal, a phenomenon which Ana Paula Ferreira compares to that which would take place after the Portuguese 1974 Revolution (Ferreira 2002: 15). Writing under the label “literatura feminina”, these women strategically appropriated the “feminine” cause of Salazar to explore crucial social and ethical issues related to the role of women within the family and the nation. 

In Manuela Porto's 1945 short-story “Maria”, the main character values maternity as the only way in which she can fulfill herself in the context of the New State regime. What this praise of motherhood reveals is not, however, a passive conformity to prescribed social roles but a desire to hold a mirror to the established order which privileges a model of passive motherhood. Porto excels in her depiction of a rather ambivalent relationship with motherhood which leads her to commit suicide once she realizes she cannot become a mother. Porto's short-story “Maria” denounces the suicidal despair experienced by Portuguese women who find themselves locked in their roles as wives and mothers of the nation.

The history of Portuguese anti-fascist struggle throughout the 1960s and 1970s would throw back the echoes of Porto's 1945 frustrated Maria. The waves of unrest fueled by student uprises felt throughout the USA and western Europe in the late 1960s, and the ensuing fight for equality between the sexes, were not immediately felt in Portugal. In this isolated corner of Europe, efforts were initially directed at fighting back fascism and colonialism, not gender or class inequality. This is attested by the growing politicization of universities in Portugal throughout the 1960s, which led to the radicalization of opposition to the regime, but not to an open debate around questions raised by women's position within the socialist opposition, as was happening beyond the Portuguese borders. As noted by Graça Abranches, “We find no women's collectives within the students' movement – as was to be expected, when no such thing as a women's movement existed in Portugal at the time” (Abranches 1998: 5). The censors of the regime regularly examined books and articles published internationally, and suppressed parts that were considered obscene before allowing their publication in Portugal. These suppressions included references to discussions on abortion abroad, and the work of influential women such Simone de Beauvoir, Betty Friedan and Kate Millet. The New State ideology forbid the distribution of the contraceptive pill in the Portuguese territory, emphasizing instead the reproductive function of female sexuality.

Despite this repressive environment, Portuguese women played a central role in clandestine activities organized by the Portuguese Communist party (PCP) before 1974, and were, as a result, regularly imprisoned and tortured by the infamous Portuguese secret police (PIDE). As noted by Tavares, the clandestine activities of the PCP were often conducted from so-called “casas do partido” [party's houses], regular homes turned into political hubs of subversion. Although women's role in these houses was pivotal for the success of the Communist opposition to the regime, their efforts were hardly ever acknowledged by men, and they faced constant discrimination in the name of an “utopia política que poderia um dia mais tarde resolver todos os problemas” [political utopia that might one day solve all problems] (Teresa Almeida quoted in Tavares 2009: 153). Because their true identity had to be hidden, these women were often referred to simply as “Maria”: 

“Eram tratadas simplesmente por 'Maria' por muitos dos seus camaradas e as suas funções mais valorizadas eram as tarefas caseiras” [They were treated simply as “Maria” by many of their comrades and the tasks performed by women that were most valued were domestic] (Tavares 2009: 152). 

The image of these silent 'Marias', looking over the shoulders of their comrades as they cooked their meal and fed their children is very significant, since it exemplifies the marxist female ideal underpinning the “original position” of the Communist community, which demanded women to be as tough as men, while accepting all the traditional burdens of womanhood. This exemplifies how Portuguese women's self-perception as feminists was, once more, reinforced by a masculinist liberation movement's inability to accommodate women's issues, this time in the context of the fight against the right-wing dictatorship and the Colonial War in Africa.

In this context, the writing process of Novas Cartas, which started in May 1971, may be best described as a collective cry of three Marias not only against fascist national isolation and repression, but also against a general silence on gender issues imposed by the marxist male opposition to the regime. As co-writers, they refuse the ideal of femininity offered by their comrades. The (very different) feminisms of the three writers were affected by the Portuguese marxist community as an oppositional protest movement that fought for the liberation from oppression without accommodating a feminist agenda. The fact that the women would later be internationally known as the “three Marias” is an ironic detail that, far than simply confirming the feminist co-opting of the book as a simplified political symbol of sisterhood, instead emphasizes the book's deliberate violation of the tacit conventions of the anti-fascist contract of “fraternidade”, responsible for the use of the “Maria” epithet in the first place.

Carolina Beatriz Ângelo: a Portuguese feminist icon

Like other Portuguese feminist women in the early twentieth century, Carolina Beatriz Ângelo participated actively and symbolically in the implementation of the Portuguese Republic. She wrote against monarchs while helping to sew and embroider the national flags that were raised in Lisbon in 1910. She formed the Portuguese Group of Feminist Studies, and the Association of Feminist Propaganda with Ana de Castro Osório, another outstanding feminist personality and founder of the first feminist association, The Portuguese Group of Feminist Studies, in 1907. Ângelo, who obtained her degree in Medicine when she was 24 years old, became a pioneer of women's suffrage in 1911 when she used the electoral law to ask for permission to register for the vote. The law offered the vote to all Portuguese citizens without mentioning gender. It required that, in order to vote, one had to be head of household and literate in Portuguese. As a widow with a child to support, Ângelo fit in all the requirements, and she succeeded in becoming voter no. 2513, as head of her family. Two years later, however, the Republican party decided to change the electoral law by stating clearly that the vote was available to male heads of household only. Portuguese women were thus denied a place and a say in the public sphere by their male Republican partners, on the basis of the supposed 'religious fanaticism of the women, which would constitute a hindrance to Republican values' (Esteves 1998: 74 in Pereira 2006: 190).

Nevertheless, the international impact of Ângelo's vote was very strong. Because of her achievement, Portugal was seen as a pioneer country in what regarded women's suffrage. The news was welcomed by feminists all over Europe, who sent telegrams and letters to the Association of Feminist Propaganda congratulating Ângelo.ⁱⁱ Portugal was seen as a symbol of hope for the women's first-wave community, and a country of feminist possibility. Graça Abranches (1998) has suggested that, although it would be tempting to draw a parallel between the organized and vocal feminist movement of the First Republic and the notoriety achieved by the case of New Portuguese Letters in 1972, the parallel cannot be drawn “because of the nature of the regime” (Abranches 1998: 6). While I agree that the political differences need to be taken into consideration, since Portugal's fascist dictatorship prevented women in the early 1970s from organizing a women's movement as had been done at the turn of the century, an important parallel remains to be drawn here, I believe, in terms of the consequences of the international impact of Portuguese feminist actions for the self-fashioning of Portuguese women as feminists. 

What is interesting about this episode, which signals a Portuguese relationship with the international world of feminist solidarity politics – a version of which would be re-enacted in the 1970s, with the publication of New Portuguese Letters – is that it was largely at odds with the kind of feminist thought that was actually being produced in this country. Portugal was (momentarily) transformed into an international political symbol of feminist unity, despite the fact that, as described by Margarida Pereira (2006), the writings of Portuguese early feminists transpired a strong sense of morality “denoting a conservatism that is very far removed, for example, from the political commitment of English suffragettes” (Pereira 2006: 187). Pereira posits, correctly, that Portugal's rigid Catholic morality hindered women's access to education, so that when feminism reached Portugal at the turn of the twentieth-century only a handful of women, mainly from the privileged classes, got involved in claiming the feminist label.ⁱⁱⁱ Pereira goes on to argue that, while this may explain why early Portuguese feminists were particularly vocal about the right for women's education, it does not entirely account for the fact that the early Portuguese feminist fight was one for social, rather than political rights. To her mind, the fact that Portuguese feminism involved a celebration of women as mothers, wives and educators stands as an “ideological contradiction” (Pereira 2006: 187). However, this assessment reveals, in part, a perception of the Portuguese feminist movement as a mere version of someone else's (in this case, a version of English suffragettes') feminism. I suggest, instead, that the early Portuguese feminist emphasis on the link between female autonomy and the social role of women as nurturers and supporters of their families and communities may be read as an early articulation of the distinctive character of the Portuguese feminist experience, which involved an early refusal to choose between identity politics (being a Portuguese woman) and political praxis (being a feminist). 

When Portuguese feminist Virgínia de Castro e Almeida writes in 1913 that “the noblest missions of a woman are, undoubtedly, love, motherhood, and education” (in Pereira 2006: 187), she is articulating a perspective that takes into account the specificities of the Portuguese female experiences along economic, cultural, political and social lines. The feminist movement of the First Republic, with the story of Ângelo's vote at its core, inaugurates – despite the context of strong international pressure to transform Portugal into a symbol of international feminism – a Portuguese female tradition of reclaiming a specific historical position that differs from the notion of a universal feminist sisterhood. This situation may have contributed to shaping a Portuguese feminist consciousness whose contours can be observed in the decades following the Three Marias' notorious case. 

More research is needed on this front! How did Portuguese women (re)create themselves as feminists throughout the twentieth century and especially in the 1970s? How did they relate to pre-existing social groups, and to the feminist international community in particular? What kind of alliances with other feminists beyond the national borders did they forge, and what were the consequences of those alliances for their self-perception as feminists?

Notes

iAna de Castro Osório published As Mulheres Portuguesas in 1905, the first Portuguese feminist manifesto where she emphasises the need to educate women. She also defends that women should work outside the home and be independent. Osório also became involved in the National Council of Portuguese Women, an umbrella organization for women's groups, later closed down by the Salazar regime in 1947. See Wayne 2011: 371.

iiInterview with Manuela Tavares in Câmara Clara, 'Ser Feminista é querer ser pessoa', 9 October 2011 <http://camaraclara.rtp.pt/#/arquivo/228> Accessed [15 April 2013].

iiiIlliteracy rates were high, and most Portuguese women were unskilled workers throughout the first half of the twentieth-century. In 1940, 56,1% Portuguese women and 41.2% Portuguese men were illiterate. In Maria Cândida Proença. História. O Estado Novo. Materiais para Professores. Lisboa: Instituto de Inovação Educacional, Ministério da Educação. 1997: 64, in Ferreira 2002: 26.   

precarious persistence

As I look at the vicious seagulls that populate the skies of a city I still don't understand, I feel vulnerable. To feel vulnerable here is to realise that without this pavement, my body would not be able to move. But the pavement is here. And as my feet touch it, I walk, one step at a time. I have all the surfaces at my disposal. They are here to help me touch, eat, drink, hear, sleep, wash, feel. It is different from the kind of vulnerability I felt when I was on vacation. To feel vulnerable then was to experience a certain desire for immobility once I thought that I was standing upside down from the point of view of a map of the planet Earth. But back to this place called Exeter. A talk about vulnerability comes to my mind as I walk. It was a talk I was privileged to access, simply because I had a Raven account. A Raven account is another kind of pavement that helps you get noticed. Judy felt too vulnerable about her work and did not want it to reach the ears of the world just now. So the wisdom landed on Cambridge and was sealed in. Yes I understand. Sometimes when I walk I also hold my breath when people pass me by. I do that to close some form of secret pathway into me. But then I have to take a deep breath and take in all that is in the air. Now that I have a window overlooking a new green campus, I can say that behind this window I am experiencing a form of precarious persistence as she said, yes. I am vulnerable to all the people I don't know but know I will meet, and to all the visions of the city I will come to know, and to the agendas of others, and to all the possible failures and successes that are coming my way. It feels like an unstoppable train that makes the pavement shake ever so slightly. That train is always coming, it is not a passing train. And yet I persist, here, avoiding the seagull that comes for my sandwich.

"Although we often speak as if vulnerability is a contingent and passing circumstance, there are reasons not to accept that as a general view. It is always possible to say: "I was vulnerable then, but I am not vulnerable anymore", and we say that in relation to specific situations in which we felt ourselves to be at risk. They can be emotional situations in which we are very much vulnerable to rejection but later on find that we have lost that vulnerability. Even as it makes sense to speak this way, about episodic vulnerability, it makes equal sense to treat with caution the seductions of ordinary discourse at such a moment. (...) The condition of vulnerability is not in itself precisely changeable, and it is not always known to ourselves. This only means that vulnerability is a more or less implicit or explicit feature of our experience. To say that we are all vulnerable beings is to mark our radical dependency not only on others but on a sustaining and sustainable world. Strength is not the opposite of vulnerability. (...) We must connect to the world we wish to see, or refuse the one that is doing us in. Is this not a form of deliberate exposure, precarious persistence, as the very demand for a livable life? Vulnerable acting." (Judith Butler)

A cauda

Escritórios exclusivos rebrilham na solidão das nuvens

enquanto gravatas edificadas martelam telemóveis

à sombra gherkiniana do cash flow.

Em baixo, por entre as peles de pettycoat lane,

ganho nacionalidade de vespa.

Dentes macios sorriem

no mercado de prejuízos arredondados.

Na penumbra do semáforo,

de boris bike no bolso,

relembro a esperança que pedala adiante,

e que ultraleve ultrapassa a poluição

e sobe aos últimos andares do Nido

e desce em desatino até ao capacete.

Reparo que pedalo em unísono

com a sua cauda brilhante.

Pussy Riot: the faces of rebellion

Three young Russian women - Maria Aliokhina, Nadezha Tolokonnikova and Iekaterina Samutsevich - were arrested earlier this year after occupying a cathedral in Moscow to sing a punk prayer against Putin. They are accused of vandalism and religious hatred. If found guilty, they could spend up to seven years in prison. Similarly to what happened to the Three Marias in the 70s, these women's trial has been delayed since February. Let's hope that History repeats itself and that a revolution in Russia is able to suspend the accusation. 

Who said we live in a world beyond gender? New theories of gender must start right here.

The trial begins on 30 July.

(Chorus) St. Maria, Virgin, Drive away Putin Drive away! Drive away Putin! (end chorus) 
Black robe, golden epaulettes
All parishioners are crawling and bowing
The ghost of freedom is in heaven
Gay pride sent to Siberia in chains
 The head of the KGB is their chief saint
Leads protesters to prison under escort
In order not to offend the Holy
Women have to give birth and to love
 Holy shit, shit, Lord's shit! Holy shit, shit, Lord's shit! (Chorus)
St. Maria, Virgin, become a feminist 
Become a feminist, Become a feminist (end chorus) 
Church praises the rotten dictators 
The cross-bearer procession of black limousines 
In school you are going to meet with a teacher-preacher 
Go to class - bring him money! 
 Patriarch Gundyaev believes in Putin 
Bitch, you better believed in God 
Belt of the Virgin is no substitute for mass-meetings 
In protest of our Ever-Virgin Mary! (Chorus) 
St. Maria, Virgin, Drive away Putin Drive away! Drive away Putin! (end chorus)

Novas Cartas Portuguesas: The Making of a Reputation

My article on Novas Cartas is now available in the Journal of Feminist Scholarship (open-access). Comments are very welcome!

Ana Margarida Dias Martins turns our attention to the feminist literary and theoretical canon as she focuses on the text Novas Cartas Portuguesas (New Portuguese Letters), published in 1972 and co-authored by Portuguese writers Maria Isabel Barreno, Maria Teresa Horta, and Maria Velho da Costa. Martins reassesses the internationalization of Novas Cartas Portuguesas in order to understand what forces, both theoretical and political, kept the text from becoming an established part of feminist literary canons in Europe or the United States, while also exposing how it contributed to 1970s feminist intellectual conversations and movement. In doing so, Martins also argues for further reanalysis of Novas Cartas Portuguesas in order to understand the often overlooked relationship between French and Anglo-American feminisms and texts from outside the Franco-Anglophone spectrum.