Research Question:
How can we use Lugones’ “active subjectivity” and Khosravi Ooryad’s “coalitional mothering” to understand how the Dadkhah/Takumbeng women resist and/or navigate dominant cultural contents in digital and non-Western context?
Introduction:
This essay looks at the resistances and challenges that struggling identities have in conventional dominant positions, narrowing down to non-Western and digital contexts. To explain what a struggling identity is, or what dominant cultural norms are, I will be using two articles: María Lugones in her work From Within Germinative Stasis: Creating Active Subjectivity, Resistant Agency, 2005, and Sama Khosravi Ooryad’s Dadkhah, Mothers of Iran, 2022; then analyze their ways of resistance through theoretical frameworks.
For Lugones, it is the marginalized identities that are confronted with a borderland existence, an edge of several worlds defined by cultural, racial, and gender oppression. Women of color resist this confinement within dominant logics that define them either as passive or subservient. “Women of color are not supposed to make sense or choices outside the domain where they are dominated” (Lugones, 2005, p. 86). It was here equally that Khosravi Ooryad discussed the Dadkhah mothers, situated within a politicized marginality, signaling ways in which, in Iran, they challenge state narrations and problematize dominant ways of viewing mothers in ways that valorize martyrdom and acquiescence (Ooryad, 2022, p. 45).
Cultural Dominating Norms: Cultural dominant norms are the values, practices, and logics through which hegemonies impose their order for keeping others in a state of marginality. Colombian American philosopher Lugones elaborates on the Western notion of agency: “An intentionality that presupposes ready-made hierarchical worlds of sense” (Lugones 2005, p.87). Dominant logic holds hostage individuals to certain social roles.
In this regard, Khosravi Ooryad addresses how, within non-Western contexts, the Iranian state enforces patriarchal ideals of motherhood so as to silence mothers who protest political violence (Ooryad, 2022, p. 48).
In trying to address this research question, I draw on Lugones’ notion of “active subjectivity” and Khosravi Ooryad’s concept of “digital dadkhahi”. Lugones negates even the agency itself as a Western paradigmatic notion: she rethinks resistance by the marginalized as becoming that create meaning and intentions in and from within oppressive systems according to Lugones (2005, p. 90). It is that kind of active subjectivity which produces a metamorphic resistance from within the stasis.
Khosravi Ooryad complements this by exploring how the Dadkhah mothers use digital activism and transnational coalitional mothering to challenge cultural and political dominance (Ooryad, 2022, p. 46).
These theoretical approaches are best because they understand resistance as one continuous, dynamic process rather than an act. The active subjectivity of Lugones will allow us to understand how the people navigate across their multiple points of oppression into positions that undermine the dominant structures of power. So too, Khosravi Ooryad’s digital dadkhahi has shown us how technology allows subaltern solidarities-in his case, Iranian mothers-to fabricate new spaces of resistance.
While both theories give hints of multiplicity and complexity, they are the real lives of subjugated peoples in oppressive regimes.
Case Study:
One important case study is the activism of the Dadkhah Mothers of Iran against the Iranian State’s authoritarian control through different modes of physical and digital activism. Led by grief over the killings of their children due to political violence, these mothers have congregated in public places despite harassment and censorship by the state (Ooryad, 2022, p. 49). That is also understood as “digital dadkhahi” or, in other words, digital activism through which these mothers push their struggle beyond the nation’s borders as they rally on social media to keep the movement alive and skip state repression. According to Ooryad (2022, p. 52), in that case, bodily presences and digital platforms are justified in being used together in resisting dominant culture in erasing their voices.
In short, it is through active subjectivity and digital activism that subjugated identities resist dominant cultural norms. In fact, their strategies have, à la the Dadkhah mothers acting through transnational coalitional mothering and digital protest, charted new spaces of resistance against political and cultural dominance in the non-West.
Similarly, Kah (2011) notes the extensive contribution of women in resistance to male and colonial subjugation in Cameroon’s Western Grassfield through effective use of symbols, organization, and overall leadership. Through their struggles of resistance in women’s wings of political parties, women in the Grassfields were able to make significant contributions to the independence and reunification of West and East Cameroon on 1st October 1961.
According to Yenshu and Ngwa (2001), the Takumbeng female secret society is a distinct indigenous society fostering traditional female power and authority within the Mankon fondom of the Cameroon grassfields. It is a heterogeneous group with members from various ethnic structures in different villages from the chiefdoms of Nkwen, Chomba, Mbatu, Mendankwe, Akum, Santa, Bafut, Bambili, and Bambui.
The Takumbeng women of the Western Grassfields of Cameroon utilize physical-bodily presence through symbols to resist dominant cultural norms and political over bearings. In the 1990’2 in Cameroon following the reintroduction of multiparty politics, these group of women operating in the Grassfields used their breasts as weapons of war, four-finger whistling to mobilise people against oppressive practices and stripped naked, exposing their vaginas to counter overzealous military men in the community (Kah, 2011, p. 75).
Khosravi Ooryad’s coalition mothering is exemplified in Kan’s (2011) as women in their solidarity groups like the Takumbeng use their bodies for dancing to desecrate the compounds of ‘trouble makers’ or those who were in support of colonial or subjective regimes.
The fight for liberation from colonial regimes in the Western Grassfield’s as seen in the use of symbols in the form of plantain leaves amongst others indicates forms of resistance as women tried to resist stereotypes that portray them as unimportant in society. As Lugone (2005) postulates, women seek out and assert their narratives and perspectives of how they should be viewed and treated in varied ways.
Though Lugone (2005) tries to dispel the notion of an ordered agency, which to her is predominant in the West, against liberation, this agency is much alive in non-Western premises. The sense of hierarchy is predominant in Cameroon’s Western Grassfield regions where the Takumbeng originates. This tells of the existence of ready-made choices to be followed.
This contemplation by Lugone (2005) finds resonance in previous thoughts by Mohanty (2003) where in her discourse on feminism without borders, she contends that constructions of “Third World feminisms” should address two things: the internal critique of hegemonic “Western” feminisms and the formulation of autonomous feminist concerns and strategies that are geographically, historically, and culturally grounded. The later on critiquing Western feminism lends credit to Lugone’s argument on potential disparities that could exist between Western and non-Western agencies of ascribed behaviours for women and counter plays of the agency of liberation.
Consistent with her philosophy, Mohanty (2003) thinks deconstructing and dismantling philosophical logics between nations is essential in building and constructing the views of African thinkers.
Following the 2009 Green Movement, nation-wide protests in Iran, mothers continued to mourn the loss of their children and others killed in the unrest by Government (Ooryad, 2022). Both Khosravi and Lugone are keen on liberation against established hierarchy’s and protocols. Women groups militating against these established patterns form variances in understanding the coalition mothering submissions and resistant agencies of the authors.
The notion of women/ feminist collective bargains has deep roots in feminist/gender theories. Mohanty (2003) expounds on the community of sisterhood, as a driver in the engagements of feminist struggles for economic and social justice.
Sisterhood, coalitions and the politics of expression would arguably suffer in growth if isolated and made individualized.
Butler (2015) in observing her performance theory of assembly which is very much linked to vulnerabilities, coalition politics does not delve much further from the thoughts of Mohanty (2003). She explains that considerations of vulnerability as forms of activism, with the potential for extensive mobilization either for or against. The Takumbeng women for instance in their activities engage with various forms of vulnerability for resistance against certain injustices perpetrated on women.
Equally, solidarity forms a crescent when underscoring the agencies of minoritized identities. Though solidarity provides for coalition bonds amongst women to foster their agendas for liberation, it is important to note that within society, there are complex interplays of varying degrees of power and privileges that often than not overbear on good efforts for considerations.
Finding further comprehensive thought on resistance and solidarity takes us to Ooryad (2022) where the author expresses that understanding mothering and dadkhahi in the Iranian setting requires a relook of resistance and collective solidarity-building – beyond Western conceptions of ‘agency’ as Lugone intimated. To add, Ooryad (2022, p.48) describes the Dadkhah mother of Iran as one different from the melancholic mother of Pakistan in that while the former seeks collective interests, the later is self-serving in her resistance, a scenario that defeats the purpose of solidarity and coalition.
Berg and Carbin (2018) wrote on solidarity from a religious identity minioritized point-of-view with the hijab outcry that occured in Sweden after Muslim lady was harrased. This call created a frenzy bond for all women to join in coalition to say no to various forms of violence against women. The camapaign was largely a digital campaign on various social media sites like Facebook, X and Instagram. The campaign for muslim women to veil themselves is in other ways supported by Abu-Lughod’s (2002) questioning of the rhetoric of salvation for the Afghan woman who is often seen as being rescued from a veiled life to other forms of structural violence existing in the United States of America.
In recent times, following the socio-political unrest in Cameroon in the North West and South West regions now in its seventh year since 2016, Takumbeng women have demonstrated resistance to the killing of children through the carrying of symbolic plaques and peace branches and sitting on the ground at grand stands in Buea and Bamenda for days.
Research questions:
Possible research questions that can emerge from the topic in focus in this essay include:
– To what extent do the principles of active subjectivity by María Lugones and coalitional mothering by Sama Khosravi Ooryad empower the Dadkhah/Takumbeng women in resisting dominant cultural norms within digital spaces in non-Western contexts?
– How do the Dadkhah/Takumbeng women utilize digital platforms to express their active subjectivity and engage in coalitional mothering practices to challenge and navigate dominant cultural contents in their communities?
– In what ways do the concepts of active subjectivity and coalitional mothering provide a framework for understanding the intersectional experiences of the Dadkhah/Takumbeng women as they navigate both digital and non-Western environments, and how do these frameworks contribute to their agency and resistance strategies?
To conclude, the theories of Ooryad (2022) and Lugone (2005) in focus in this essay touch on active subjectivity and coalition mothering perspectives of feminist approaches in gender studies. These theories are relevant in procuring an understanding of minoritized identities, in this case women, resist dominant cultural norms within digital spaces in non-Wester contexts. The case study of the Takumbeng women group, born in Cameroon’s Western Grassfield’s in the 1950’s presents a scenario of how women grew and have grown to resist stereotypes in society even much earlier before they could learn of certain disparities between Western and non-Western agencies of hegemony.
References
Abu-Lughod, L. (2002). Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving? Anthropological Reflections on Cultural Relativism and Its Others. American Anthropologist, 104(3), 783 – 790.
Butler, J. (2015). Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly. Harvard University Press.
Berg, L., & Carbin, M. (2018). Troubling Solidarity: Anti-racist Feminist Protest in a Digitalized Time. Women’s Quarterly, 48(3&4). 120 – 136.
Kah, H.K. (2011). Women’s Resistance in Cameroon’s Western Grassfields: The Power of Symbols, Organization, and Leadership,1957-1961. African Studies Quarterly, 12 (3), 67 – 91.
Lugones, M. (2005). From within Germinative Stasis: Creating Active Subjectivity, Resistant Agency (pp. 85 – 99). 10.1057/9781403977137_9.
Mohanty, C. T. (2003). Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity. Duke University Press.
Ooryad, S. K. (2022). Dadkhah mothers of Iran, from Khavarn to Aban: digital dadkhahi and transnational coalitional mothering. 25 (1) 42 – 63.
Yenshu, E. V., & Ngwa, G. (2001). “Changing Intercommunity Relations and the Politics of Identity in the Northern Mezam Area, Cameroon”, Cahiers d’Études africaines, XLI (1), 161: 163-190.