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Ms.
Women of the Year
Marleine Bastien
Jennifer Erikson +Robert Riley
Magda Escobar
Jane Fonda
Rebecca Gomperts
Naomi Klein
Barbara Lee
Yoko Ono
Sylvia Rhone
Venus + Serena Williams
The Women of Afghanistan
World Trade Center Heroes
Michelle Yeoh
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Women
Who Made A Difference
A few of the brave and tenacious women who left their
mark on this momentous year—and one enduring female
superhero. |
30
Years of Ms.
A few of our words—and yours—about the magazine
and its mission, and the roads we've traveled along the
way. |
Phantom
Towers
An excerpt by Rosalind P. Petchesky |
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Editor's
Page: Turning Point
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Bold
Before Her Time
Edna St. Vincent Millay's reckless life by Le Anne Schreiber |
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Books:
Reviews
Special: An Excerpt from
Families As We Are by Perdita Houston
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Back
Page
Inherit the War |
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Exerpted from "Phantom Towers" in the Dec/Jan issue
of Ms. on newsstands now
These are trying times, hard times to know where we are from
one day to the next. The attack on the World Trade Center has
left many kinds of damage in its wake, not the least of which
is a gaping ethical and political confusion in the minds of
many Americans who identify in some way as "progressive": antiracist,
feminist, democratic (small "d"), antiwar. While we have a responsibility
to those who died, to their loved ones, and to ourselves to
mourn, it is urgent that we also think through what kind of
world we are now living in and what it demands of us. And we
have to do this, even while we know our understanding can only
be very tentative and may well be invalidated a year, a month,
or even a week from now by events we can't foresee or information
now hidden from us.
So, at the risk of being completely wrong, I want to try to
draw a picture of the global power dynamics as I see them at
this moment, including their gender and racial dimensions. I
want to ask whether there is some more humane and peaceable
way out of the two unacceptable polarities now being presented
to us: the permanent war machine (or permanent security state)
and the regime of holy terror.
By asking whether we are facing a confrontation between global
capitalism and an Islamist-fundamentalist brand of fascism,
I do not mean to imply they are equivalent. Given what appears
to be the strong likelihood that the attacks of September 11
were the work of bin Laden's Al Qaeda network or something related
and even larger, most of you reading this are positioned in
a way that gives little choice about identity. (For the Muslim
Americans and Arab Americans among us, who are both opposed
to terrorism and terrified to walk in our streets, the moral
dilemma is much more agonizing.) As an American, a woman, a
feminist, and a Jew, I have to recognize that the bin Ladens
of the world would like me dead; or, if they had power over
me, would make my life a living hell. I have to wish them apprehended,
annulled, so I can breathe in some kind of peace. This is quite
different from living at the center of global capitalism—which
is more like living in a very dysfunctional family that fills
you with shame and anger for its arrogance, greed, and insensitivity,
but is, like it or not, your home and gives you both immense
privileges and immense responsibilities.
I don't, however, succumb to the temptation of casting our dilemma
in terms of cosmic Good versus Evil. Currently this comes in
two opposed but mirror-image versions: the idea, put forward
not only by the terrorists and their sympathizers but also by
many on the left in the U.S. and around the globe, that blames
U.S. cultural imperialism and economic hegemony for "chickens
coming home to roost" versus the patriotic, right-wing version
that casts U.S. democracy and freedom as the innocent target
of Islamist madness. Both these stories erase all the complexities
that we must try to factor into a more inclusive ethical and
political vision. The apocalyptic rhetoric that echoed back
and forth between Bush and bin Laden in the aftermath of the
attacks-the pseudo-Islamic and the pseudo-Christian, the jihad
and the crusade—both lie.
So while I do not see terrorist networks and global capitalism
as equivalents, I do see some striking and disturbing parallels
between them. I picture them as phantom Twin Towers arising
in the smoke clouds of the old towers—fraternal twins,
not identical, locked in a battle over wealth, imperial aggrandizement,
and the meanings of masculinity. It is a battle that could well
end in a stalemate, an interminable cycle of violence that neither
can win because of their failure to see the other clearly. Feminist
analysts and activists from many countries—whose voices
have been inaudible thus far-have a lot of experience to draw
from in making this double critique. Whether in the U.N. or
national settings, we have been challenging the gender-biased
and racist dimensions of both neoliberal capitalism and various
fundamentalisms for years, trying to steer a path between their
double menace. The difference now is that they parade onto the
world stage in their most extreme and violent forms.
Rosalind P. Petchesky is Distinguished Professor of Political
Science at Hunter College and the Graduate Center, City University
of New York.
To read more, pick up a copy of Ms. Magazine on a newsstand
today!
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