DOCSLIB.ORG

Leymah Gbowee and the Hazards of Reception 1. Liberian Civil Wars

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Leymah Gbowee and the Hazards of Reception 1. Liberian Civil Wars Leymah Gbowee and the Hazards of Reception 1. Liberian Civil Wars (1989-96; 1999-2003) a. President after first Civil War: Charles Taylor i. “He killed my ma, he killed my pa, but I will vote for him” (Morales 2013: 283) b. Child soldiers; warlords; drugs; mass murder; pandemic sexual violence c. Ousted by coalition of women organized by Leymah Gbowee (1972 - ) and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (1938 - ), now the president 2. Leymah Gbowee a. Trauma healing b. Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace i. “We worked daily confronting warlords, meeting with dictators and refusing to be silenced in the face of AK 47 and RPGs. We walked when we had no transportation, we fasted when water was unaffordable, we held hands in the face of danger, we spoke truth to power when everyone else was being diplomatic, we stood under the rain and the sun with our children to tell the world the stories of the other side of the conflict” (Gbowee 2011) ii. Re-conceptualizing religious spaces to show powerful Muslim and Christian women and bring the groups together 1. Religious motivation: purity & humility, not sexual teasing iii. Nonviolent protesting – sit-ins, lectures, rallies, a “human barricade” blocking men from leaving peace talks (Morales 2013: 289) c. A lifetime devoted to securing peace and safety to her community 3. Lysistrata? a. “The [sex] strike lasted, on and off, for a few months. It had little or no practical effect, but it was extremely valuable in getting us media attention.” (Gbowee & Mithers 2011: 147) i. “‘Sex Strike’ is the headline that sells.” (Morales 2013: 288) b. Huffington Post, Daily Telegraph, New York Times, among many others all link Gbowee and Lysistrata i. Democracy Now!: “How a Sex Strike Propelled Men to Refuse War” ii. In Spike Lee’s Chi-Raq (2015), a modern translation/adaptation of Lysistrata, the protagonist is told “just Google Leymah Gbowee” for motivation iii. “The Lysistrata Project” – organization formed to protest the American invasion of Iraq 1. Stage national readings of Lysistrata c. No Liberian press connects Gbowee & Lysistrata (Morales 2013: 282) 4. “Sex Strikes” a. A “bogus” category (Morales 2013: 292) b. To comedy-ize is to trivialize i. Erase the actual difficulties of implementation and risk of greater violence c. Implicit Sexism i. Parallel to labor strikes – sex as women’s “labor”? ii. Flipside of the “Scheming Seductress” trope iii. Re-privatization of Gbowee’s public work d. Implicit racism: a simpler culture ruled by simpler (baser) men who can be compelled by baser instincts 5. The Hazards of Reception a. Assumption that acts of reception are beneficial or at least benign i. Desire to connect the Classics and the present both to “understand our time” and to centralize our field of study b. Lysistrata connection in many ways simplifies, trivializes, and insults Gbowee’s work, obfuscating rather than illuminating Bibliography Bloomfield, A. 2011. “Nobel Peace Prize: Activist Who Used Sex as Weapon for Peace among Three Female Recipients.” The Daily Telegraph, October 7. Cockburn, C. 2007, From Where We Stand: War, Women’s Activism and Feminist Analysis. London: Zed Books. Gbowee, L. R. 2011. “Nobel Lecture.” Oslo, Norway, December 10. Gbowee, L. R. & Mithers, C. 2011. Mighty Be Our Powers. New York: Beast Books. Hilkovitz, A. 2014. “Beyond Sex Strikes: Women's Movements, Peace Building, and Negotiation in Lysistrata and Pray the Devil Back to Hell.” Journal for the Study of Peace and Conflict: 124-34. Parms, J. 2008. “Pray the Devil Back to Hell.” Huffington Post, November 13. Morales, H. 2013. “Aristophanes Lysistrata, the Liberian ‘Sex Strike’, and the Politics of Reception” Greece & Rome 60: 281-95 O’Connor, K. 2010. Gender and Women’s Leadership: A Reference Handbook. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications Ltd. .
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Aristophanes' Lysistrata Today
    DIDASKALIA 9 (2012 ) 1 Risk-taking and Transgression: Aristophanes' Lysistrata Today Michael Ewans! The University of Newcastle Robert Phiddian! Flinders University Lysistrata, first performed in 411 BCE, is an Old Comedy about a fictional sex strike by the women of Greece designed to stop the Peloponnesian War. At a dark moment, when defeat appeared to be looming for Athens, the play provided a fantasy of peace. In recent decades it has been the most often revived and taught of Aristophanes’ plays, with 119 performances worldwide in the years 1990–2010, according to the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama.1 This piece, a collaboration between a translator and theatre researcher (Michael Ewans) and a Greekless literary scholar (Robert Phiddian), recounts a small part of that performance history, a part that sheds light on how this play translates (both literally and culturally) from fifth-century Athens to twenty-first-century Australia. The performances examined are a full-scale production designed to test and perfect Ewans’s new translation of the play at the University of Newcastle (New South Wales) in 2005, and a series of dramatised readings of the play (in the context of a course on comedy and satire) performed at Flinders University in Adelaide between 1998 and 2009, initially with Alan Sommerstein’s translations published by Penguin and subsequently with Ewans’s translation. Lysistrata remains popular not just because it is good, but also because it remains topically significant for its antiwar message and the apparently feminist premise of women taking over public affairs.2 These causes of popularity are potentially a two-edged sword for understanding the play, as relevance can be bought at the price of anachronism and distortion of meaning.
    [Show full text]
  • LYSISTRATA Animation Transcript
    LYSISTRATA Animation Transcript Timecode Script 00:00:00 Title Plate LYSISTRATA by ARISTOPHANES 00:00:04 To put an end to the Peloponnesian war, Lysistrata persuades women from all over Greece to go on a sex strike until the men agree to make peace. 00:00:15 Lysistrata hatches a plan with the older women to seize control of the Acropolis, where the city treasury is kept. 00:00:22 The men attempt to smoke the women out of the Acropolis but the women extinguish the fires and triumphantly drench the men. 00:00:31 When a magistrate, a proboulos, arrives to retrieve funds for the war Lysistrata berates him about the losses that the women have been forced to bear. 00:00:38 Text Card Women have to take on more than twice your burden. Firstly it’s us giving birth to children, then we send them off as soldiers. 00:00:49 The women dress the magistrate up in their clothes, and send him away humiliated. 00:00:57 As the strike continues the sex-starved men of Greece become increasingly desperate. 00:01:04 A Spartan Herald approaches the Acropolis and finds the magistrate outside. He explains the desperate situation of his countrymen and they both agree that a treaty is required. 00:01:18 Delegations from Athens and Sparta meet to discuss the treaty. Lysistrata appears with her naked handmaid, Peace. The men’s eyes are fixated on Peace as Lysistrata chastises them for treating each other so badly and reminds them that they previously helped one another.
    [Show full text]
  • Lysistrata: the Ritual Logic of the Sex-Strike
    Lysistrata: the Ritual Logic of the Sex-strike by Camilla Power (Lecturer in Anthropology, University of East London) Aristophanes, born about 450BC, was at the height of his powers during the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta. His three comedies of sexual subversion — Λυσιστρατη (Lysistrata), Θεσµoφoριαζoυσαι (Thesmophoriazusai) and ’Εκκλησιαζoυσαι (Ekklesiazusai) — are the remaining examples of what may have been a traditional ‘feminist’ or gynocratic theme in Old Athenian Comedy. In this paper I intend to show, with particular reference to Lysistrata, that there is a ritual logic inherent in the structure of these plays, and in the myths, rites and cults to which they allude. Such logic, I would suggest, is derived from a very ancient template, the influence of which persisted in Greek women's ritual culture down to Aristophanes' time. The theme – Γυvαικoκρατια The idea of women performing roles of men, i.e. taking part in the business of the πoλις (polis) as opposed to that of the ’oικoς (oikos), the sphere of domestic management, seems to have been inherently comic to the Greek citizen of Aristophanes' Athens. The only public sphere of activity open to women was ritual and sacerdotal. That the male audience's laughter would have been, to an extent, a nervous release, chanelling anxieties about male status, can be deduced from the traditional theme of γυvαικoκρατια — rule of women — in Greek myth and art. We have, for example, the battles fought with the Amazons at the heart of Athens celebrated in the Parthenon friezes — in na, a goddess herself Amazon at heart; the myths of theεthe temple of Ath Danaids, and of the Lemnian women, archetypal figures of female rebellion, indeed of sex-strike.
    [Show full text]
  • Greek Drama As Feminist Window on American Identity 1900-1925
    Pre-print version of article forthcoming in K. Bosher, F. Macintosh, J. McConnell and Patrice Rankine (eds. 2014) The Oxford Handbook to Greek Drama in the Americas The Migrant Muse: Greek Drama as Feminist Window on American Identity 1900-1925 Edith Hall (KCL) The Quest for a New Muse Just before the academic rediscovery of ancient Greek drama in performance in the 1880s, Walt Whitman appealed for a new form of poetry to replace worn-out classicism, in ‘Song of the exposition’ (1871): Come, Muse, migrate from Greece and Ionia; Cross out, please, those immensely overpaid accounts. That matter of Troy, and Achilles’ wrath, and Eneas’, Odysseus’ wanderings; Place ‘Removed’ and ‘To Let’ on the rocks of your snowy Parnassus... For know a better, fresher, busier sphere – a wide, untried domain, awaits, demands you. But what, precisely, would be the nature of the Muse’s fresher, busier, untried North American domain? If she was to migrate from Greece and Ionia, how was she to adapt herself to a new destination far from her original home? This chapter looks at some ways in which American Modernist feminists used the Muse of Greek drama in the reconfiguration of American identity. Fifty years later, on July 7th 1921, Calvin Coolidge, Vice-President of the USA, addressed the American Classical League at UP in Philadelphia. Despite the tumultuous history 1 Pre-print version of article forthcoming in K. Bosher, F. Macintosh, J. McConnell and Patrice Rankine (eds. 2014) The Oxford Handbook to Greek Drama in the Americas of the intervening decades, he still defended the American tradition of classical education, even while confessing his desire for a distinctively American identity: We do not wish to be Greek.
    [Show full text]
  • Viewpoint That Fifth- Century B.C.E
    University of Alberta From Elite to Inclusive: Lysistrata and Gender, Democracy, and War by Giorgia Cinzia Severini A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Department of Drama ©Giorgia Cinzia Severini Spring 2010 Edmonton, Alberta Permission is hereby granted to the University of Alberta Libraries to reproduce single copies of this thesis and to lend or sell such copies for private, scholarly or scientific research purposes only. Where the thesis is converted to, or otherwise made available in digital form, the University of Alberta will advise potential users of the thesis of these terms. The author reserves all other publication and other rights in association with the copyright in the thesis and, except as herein before provided, neither the thesis nor any substantial portion thereof may be printed or otherwise reproduced in any material form whatsoever without the author's prior written permission. Examining Committee Dr. John A. Hawkins, Drama Dr. Rosalind Kerr, Drama Dr. Selina Stewart, History and Classics Abstract Aristophanes’ comedy Lysistrata has been a favorite choice for anti-war activists since its first production in Athens in 411 B.C.E. as a response to the Peloponnesian War. In 2003, Lysistrata was chosen for the Lysistrata Project, a global theatrical protest against the United States’ planned invasion of Iraq. The Project was created in New York City but grew to involve participants from 59 countries. In this thesis, I examine Lysistrata in its original context of the Peloponnesian War, then I move on to the Lysistrata Project in the context of American democracy and modern Greece.
    [Show full text]
  • LYSISTRATA by LAURA FACCIPONTI
    A TEACHER’S GUIDE TO THE SIGNET CLASSIC EDITION OF ARISTOPHANES’S LYSISTRATA By LAURA FACCIPONTI SERIES EDITORS: W. GEIGER ELLIS, ED.D., UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA, EMERITUS and ARTHEA J. S. REED, PH.D., UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA, RETIRED A Teacher’s Guide to the Signet Classic Edition of Aristophanes’s Lysistrata 2 INTRODUCTION ADULT THEMES Classic Greek comedies are frequently bawdy, using physical humor, puns, and sexually explicit language. Lysistrata, due to its subject matter, is one of the most sexually focused comedies of its time. Therefore, educators should be aware that the play and this study guide contain adult themes and language. The play refers to various men exposing erections (traditionally men wore leather phalluses for this effect), and the dialogue exchanged between characters has numerous puns on the men’s physical condition. The play also contains scenes with nudity, sexual interactions, and seduction. Although the play has significant historic and literary value, it should be taught only to mature high school, junior college, and college/university students. High school teachers should follow all the steps prescribed by their school for approval of controversial subjects. Students and parents, when appropriate, should be aware of the sexually explicit nature of the play prior to reading or viewing. Alternative selections should be available. PLOT SYNOPSIS Simply stated, the plot of Lysistrata depicts Athenian women who are fed up with the Peloponnesian War, so they barricade themselves in the Akropolis. They orchestrate a sex strike in order to force their husbands to vote for peace with Sparta. The play’s action occurs on a street in Athens in front of a gate to the Akropolis, which looms in the background.
    [Show full text]
  • Teaching a Not-G-Rated, All-Greek Lysistrata in the Midwest This Talk
    Teaching a not-G-rated, all-Greek Lysistrata in the Midwest This talk introduces CAMWS members to a lively film adaptation of this widely taught play and explains why it is (believe it or not) reasonably accessible to Midwestern college-age audiences and what it can help teach. The talk includes several short clips. I have taught Giorgos Zervoulakos’ Lysistrata (1972) for thirteen years to approximately 300 students, ranging from a cassock-clad Benedictine monk to acting majors who later staged an ‘adult’ Lysistrata of their own. Most were not humanities majors and few spoke any Greek, yet all found something of value in the film and many expressed surprise at how entertaining it proved. Bikinis, one student informed me, translate well across cultures. There is no mystery to the film’s appeal. It was produced to be a crowd-pleaser: a boisterous musical with slapstick, sight gags, singing and dancing. It won the “best production” award at the 13th Thessaloniki International Film Festival and was the second highest grossing film in Greece that year (Van Steen 2000, ). The cast were veterans of stage and film, at the height of their careers. I often pair clips from it and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (Lester, 1964), which it resembles in a number of ways, in order to contrast Old vs. New Comedy. Subtitles notwithstanding, it’s easy to watch. One often looks to stagings of ancient scripts as a way to teach issues of performance. The film is adapted closely enough that it reinforces the play but it does not try for an “authentic” recreation of an ancient staging.
    [Show full text]
  • Nuclear Weapons and a Nonkilling World 241 David Krieger
    NONKILLING SECURITY & THE STATE Edited by Joám Evans Pim Foreword by Introduction by Stephen M. Younger Chaiwat Satha-Anand Co-published by Center for Global Nonkilling Honolulu and Omaha May 2013 CREATIVE COMMONS LICENCE Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 You are free to share, copy, distribute and transmit this work* Under the following conditions: Attribution. You must attribute this work in the manner specified by the author/licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Noncommercial. You may not use this work for commercial purposes. No Derivative Works. You may not alter, transform or build upon this work. * For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work. * Any of the above conditions can be waived if you gain permission from the copyright holders. Nothing in this license impairs or restricts the Authors’ moral and legal rights. Parts of this volume have been released under GFDL and Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 as part of Wikiversity’s School of Nonkilling Studies (http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/School:Nonkilling_studies). The Center for Global Nonkilling does not necessarily endorse the views expressed by the authors. Also available for free download at: http://www.nonkilling.org © The Authors, 2013 © Center for Global Nonkilling, 2013 (this edition) Cover diagrams reproduced with the kind permission of Freedom-in-Education.com.uk First Edition: May 2013 ISBN-13 978-0-9839862-1-8 ISBN-10 0-9839862-1-5 ______________________________________________________ Cataloging in Publication Data (CIP) Nonkilling Security and the State / Edited by Joám Evans Pim.
    [Show full text]
  • The Many Faces of Lysistrata When Some Expert Transvestite Male Actor
    The Many Faces of Lysistrata When some expert transvestite male actor first donned the mask and costume of Lysistrata in 411 BC, he was making theatre history. This is by the most important female role that Aristophanes had so far composed, whether measured in terms of the number of lines, the variety of vocal and physical performance styles required by the role, or the moral and political authority which Lysistrata seems able to exert over women, men, Athenians and Spartans alike. But Lysistrata is also a sophisticated and complex figure, who shares features with several other women both in Greek myth and cult and in social reality. The standard mythical picture of ancient Greek women in wartime depicts them as passive victims of male violence, cowering behind the walls of Troy or Thebes to await the siege of their city and enslavement. But there were plenty of assertive women in Greek myth who provide precedents for some of Lysistrata’s spunky leadership qualities. The motif of the sex strike that Lysistrata proposes and implements is already present in a story told in a short epic called The Shield of Heracles: Alcmena refused to have sexual intercourse with her husband until he had avenged the death of her brothers by burning down two enemy villages (4-19). Alcmena refused sex in order to create war, where Lysistrata suggests that only sexual deprivation can bring about peace. But as sex-strike initiator she has a forebear in the epic tradition. The Aristophanic comedy can also be illuminated by the parallel provided by its plot with the various matriarchies – societies run by women rather than men – to be found in Greek myth.
    [Show full text]
  • Class of Nonviolence Colman Mccarthy
    THE CLASS OF NONVIOLENCE designed by Colman McCarthy Class of Nonviolence 1 ISBN 1440441480 EAN-13 9781440441486 The Class of Nonviolence was developed by Colman McCarthy of the Center for Teaching Peace 4501 Van Ness Street, NW, Washington, D.C. 20016 202.537.1372 2 Class of Nonviolence Table of Contents Readings for Lesson One If We Listen Well by Edward Guinan . 7 Nonviolent Response to Assault by Gerald Vanderhaar . 11 Human Nature Isn’t Inherently Violent by Alfie Kohn . 15 Axioms of Nonviolence by Lanzo del Vasto . 18 Teaching Reverence for Life by Albert Schweitzer . 23 Students Astutely Aware by Colman McCarthy . 26 Readings for Lesson Two Doctrine of the Sword by Mohandas Gandhi . 30 Gandhi in the ‘Postmodern’ Age by Sanford Krolick and Betty Cannon . 33 Family Satyagraha by Eknath Easwaren . 39 Ahimsa by Eknath Easwaren . 41 My Faith in Nonviolence by Mohandas Gandhi . 43 Love by Mohandas Gandhi . 45 A Pause From Violence by Colman McCarthy . 47 Readings for Lesson Three Love is the Measure by Dorothy Day . 52 Poverty and Precarity by Dorothy Day . 54 Undeclared War to Declared War by Dorothy Day . 56 This Money is Not Ours by Dorothy Day . 58 The Scandal of the Works of Mercy by Dorothy Day . 62 Dorothy Day by Colman McCarthy . 65 Readings for Lesson Four Martin Luther King, Jr. by Charles De Benedetti . 72 Loving Your Enemies by Martin Luther King, Jr. 77 Declaration of Independence from the War in Vietnam by Martin Luther King, Jr. 80 Pilgrimage to Nonviolence by Martin Luther King, Jr. 83 King and Pacifism: The Other Dimension by Colman McCarthy .
    [Show full text]
  • Maintaining Peace and Interstate Stability in Archaic and Classical Greece
    Alten Geschichte Studien zur Alten Geschichte Studien zur Alten Geschichte Studien zur Alten Geschichte Studien zur Alten Geschichte Studien zur Alten Geschichte Studien zur Alten Geschichte Studien zur Alten Ge Geschichte Studien zur Alten Geschichte Studien zur Alten Geschichte Studien zur Alten Geschichte Studien zur Alten Geschichte Studien zur Alten Geschichte Studien zur Alten Geschichte Studien Studien zur Alten Geschichte Studien zur Alten Geschichte Studien zur Alten Geschichte Studien zur Alten Geschichte Studien zur Alten Edited by Julia Wilker Geschichte Studien zur Alten Geschichte Studien zur Alten Geschichte Studien zur Alten Geschichte Studien zur Alten Geschichte Studien zur Alten Geschichte Studien zur Alten Geschichte Studien zur Alten Geschichte Studien zur Alten Geschichte Studien zur Alten Geschichte Studien zur Alten Geschichte Studien zur Alten Geschi Studien Maintaining Peace and Interstate Stability in Archaic and Classical Greece Alten Geschichte Studien zur Alten Geschichte Studien zur Alten Geschichte Studien zur Alten schichte Studien zur Alten Geschichte Studien zur Alten Geschichte Studien zur Alten Geschichte Studien zur Alten Geschichte Studien zur Geschichte Studien zur Alten Geschichte Studien zur Alten Geschichte Studien zur Alten Geschichte Alten Geschichte Studien zur Alten Geschichte Studien zur Alten Geschichte Studien zur Alten Geschichte Studien zur Alten Geschichte Studien zur Alten Geschichte Studien zur Alten Geschichte Alten Geschichte Studien zur Alten Geschichte Studien zur Alten Geschichte
    [Show full text]
  • Aristophanes, Gender, and Sexuality
    CHAPTER 3 Aristophanes, Gender, and Sexuality James Robson Introduction Of all the qualities of Aristophanes' plays, it is their risqué content for which they are perhaps best known in the modern world. Certainly, for commercial theaters and student productions alike, Aristophanes is regularly marketed as a "naughty" playwright, with sex—and a hint of controversy—used to pique audience interest and sell tickets. A 2013 poster of a production of Lysistrata at Austin State University portrays a strident, naked women with one sash across her breasts bearing the name of the play, while a second sash cover- ing her genitalia carries the wording: "This play contains strong adult content and language" (a warning presumably designed to maximize the play's appeal while also keeping the faint-hearted away).1 To advertise their 2014 Lysistrata, Chicago's (re)discover theatre used the image of a woman's vanity mirror onto which a penis had been scrawled in lipstick. As this image might suggest, this production, billed as an "anti-war sex farce," chose to put gender politics center stage. According to their publicity material, "[t]o spice things up, a male and female actor will alternate the roles of Lysistrata and the Magistrate every other night, giving a unique dual perspective on gender." Audience members were also invited to "pick their gender" for the night. Those choosing to be women were charged $15 for their ticket, while those opting to be men paid $20—a pricing policy which, the theater claimed, reflected the pay differential between men and women in the US at the time.2 The marketing of these two productions of Lysistrata usefully highlights three key themes in the play's modern reception: the push and pull of its "adult content"; its ability to be exploited as a "sexy" play; and the potential it offers to those staging or adapting the play to explore not only gender politics but also 1 <www.apsu.edu/news/apsu-area-theatre-and-dance-present-lysistrata-april-17-21> accessed 15 January 2016.
    [Show full text]