#edit: I think fanon does grant some interiority but it’s conspicuously only ever granted in the context of the revolution

[dykesynthezoid]

One of the topic choices for a big final essay I have to write by Monday is comparing how Alexandra Kollontai and Frantz Fanon depict the role of women in revolution and I’m like yayyyy nobody will escape my criticism yayyy!!!

[dykesynthezoid]

Bringing all my tags here so I can keep working out my thoughts:

#designation of private vs public is def going to be. hugely important here #in terms of where women are allowed and expected to exist #like you have kollontai writing as if private life has been completely abolished #the home itself abolished #worker homogeneity and the duty to the state translating as a complete dissolution of the private sphere

#whereas fanon is concerned w maintaining aspects of algerian culture that limit or narrow women's public visibility #the juggling of preserving the home and private life as the natural realm of women with socialist revolution #it's really interesting. #either way women aren't really granted a described interiority #w kollontai it's bc the private dimension of the self has ceased to exist #w fanon it's bc that interiority is deemed something inappropriate to make visible #*sigh* #maybe we just let the women talk #and not the ones literally born to the bourgeois class *cough cough*

#edit: I think fanon does grant some interiority but it's conspicuously only ever granted in the context of the revolution #he positions the algerian woman's body as THEY setting for the revolution and describes the anxieties and grim determination associated w #this #while simultaneously affirming the idea that algerian women have no choice in this #that they are *required* to meet impossible standards specifically as revolutionary action #he grants them the dimension of martyr but presents no alternative path #his criticisms of the violence of colonialism on algerian women's bodies are ofc all poignant and precisely deconstructed #but still there's no reality where algerian women don't have to suffer #it's so. meaty. rlly love digging into it.

It’s just so interesting to see Fanon deconstruct why colonizers pushing for women to stop veiling was so harmful and how the veil functions as a means of protecting oneself from the unwilling vivisection by colonial interests on one’s body (he literally describes Algerian women feeling a sense of “fragmentation” when unveiling) but also simultaneously fail to dig into the veil as tool of agency. Veiling or unveiling as an act of agency. Like if veiling is a way for a woman to control how much of her Self is presented to the colonialist power as free for the taking, then the veil should logically be granting her an immense personal power.

But this isn’t a dimension he really seems interested in. He presents Algerian women becoming revolutionaries as something inherently noble, but he also argues that it’s automatic. That it’s somehow inevitable. Even when it presents an actively difficult path for them to walk. He positions them as having no choice but to unveil for the sake of espionage. No choice but to be both stripped bare and elevated to an impossible standard of character. But also still applauds their strength for it. Is it strength if you have no choice? If you see that kind of personal sacrifice as inevitable, aren’t you really overlooking what those women actually had to give up? How much bravery it actually took?

One of the topic choices for a big final essay I have to write by Monday is comparing how Alexandra Kollontai and Frantz Fanon depict the role of women in revolution and I’m like yayyyy nobody will escape my criticism yayyy!!!