Biofuels, Development and Patriarchy

Print PDF

From the May 6, 2008 issue of New Scientist:

The image of biofuels is rapidly tarnishing. Already under fire for displacing food production and tropical forests, they are now charged with marginalising poor rural women.

In a report published on 21 April, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization concludes that women subsistence farmers will be evicted to make way for huge biofuel plantations. The most vulnerable women already suffer extreme inequalities in African, Asian and Caribbean countries. These same countries are now hoping to cash in on the growing demand for biofuels in rich western countries.

"These women don't have access to land, or the land they do occupy is owned by men," says report author, Yianna Lambrou. "So if the men decide to set up a biofuel plant, the women would simply be evicted." That would push them onto marginal land barely capable of supporting crops, and also deny them easy access to water, as biofuel production would have first claim on the supply.

Even if jobs are on offer at a biofuel plant, they'll go mainly to men, and any women employed will receive lower wages for the same job, Lambrou says.

He believes that governments need to plan in advance to prevent these problems either by helping women form cooperatives to raise capital for their own biofuel plantations, or by experimenting with combining smaller-scale biofuel production with the methods of subsistence farming already in use in the area.

The patriarchal consequences of biofuel development seem no different than the consequences of any capitalist development of land use - on this same subject for instance, see Butch Lee's 2003 essay There's Fighting in Iraq but the Real Women's War is in Afrika.

CLICK HERE TO READ ENTIRE POST

COLLAPSE POST

King Hatshepsut, the Female Falcon

Print PDF

Hatshepsut, female king of Egypt

Bear with me - this may seem a bit off-topic:

Tooth brings lost Egyptian queen to light
JONATHAN WRIGHT
REUTERS
CAIRO – A single tooth has clinched the identification of an ancient mummy as that of Hatshepsut, Egypt’s most famous queen, who ruled about 3,500 years ago, the country’s chief archaeologist said yesterday.

The right mummy turned out to be that of a fat woman in her 50s who had rotten teeth and died of bone cancer, Zahi Hawass said.

It was found in 1903 in a tomb in the Valley of the Kings, where the young Pharaoh Tutankhamun was buried, and Hawass himself thought until recently that it belonged to the owner of the tomb, Hatshepsut’s wetnurse by the name of Sitre In.

But the decisive evidence was a molar in a wood box inscribed with the queen’s name, found in 1881 in a cache of royal mummies collected and hidden away for safekeeping at a temple about 1,000 metres away.

During the embalming process, it was common to set aside spare body parts and preserve them in such a box.

Orthodontics professor Yehya Zakariya checked all the mummies that might be Hatshepsut’s and found the tooth was a perfect fit in a gap in the upper jaw of the fat woman.

The team examining the mummy are also doing DNA tests and preliminary results show similarities between its DNA and that of Ahmose Nefertari, the wife of the founder of the 18th dynasty and a probable ancestor of Hatsephsut.

So what's the deal with this "fat woman in her 50s", and why am i blogging about the ruling class of ancient Egypt?

Well, like i said, bear with me. While not of direct relevance to the battles of today, and while certainly not worth basing your line on, the way in which anything, even long dead-monarchs from thousands of years ago, gets discussed can be worth discussing... and besides, i find it interesting, perhaps even because it isn't all clear and isn't all directly related to stuff going on down the street today. Combine this basic predilection with the fact that i just finished Bob Brier's The History of Ancient Egypt (told you all i was looking for new shit to listen to while making buttons) and there you go...

There are a few things which are special about Hatshepsut, none of which get mentioned in this malestream news article. And no, it's not her weight or her dental hygiene - both of which were standard for the Egyptian ruling class, for being heavy was simply a sign that you were privileged enough to eat a lot, and bad teeth were an almost inevitable consequence of living long enough for the sand in your bread to grind them down. So unlike what Reuters would have us believe was significant about Hatshepsut, it wasn't a matter of her smile or her figure.

Nor indeed was it the fact that Hatshepsut was queen... because in fact she never was, there was no word for "Queen" in Egypt at the time, only for "King's wife". So Hatshepsut would go from being the king's wife to being the king herself. That's an important distinction, one which Egyptologists are unambiguous about, but also one which probably got edited out of your daily paper. At a certain point Hatshepsut made a play for power, and won, and in winning took on the false beard and crown of the Pharaoh, and from that point on had herself depicted as king on the temple walls.

Note that i am still referring to Hashepsut as "her" and "she" - i understand that some people will be tempted to retroactively claim the king as an FTM, or at least as being utterly genderqueer, but (1) it's authoritarian, dishonest and unhelpful to retrofit folks from the past with terms and concepts that did not even exist when they were alive and (2) while she was alive, at the same time as she had herself described as "king", she also had herself described with as the "female falcon", the "daughter of Amun" and with various female pronouns.

So rather than transitioning, Hatshepsut's becoming king seems to have been a way to establish herself as having all the same power that until then had been both ontologically and etymologically reserved for men. Which isn't to say she might not have been leaving a gender, that what she was doing may not have involved more than "just" putting on a fake beard... only that there is no evidence that Hatshepsut considered themself a man, or wanted to have male pronouns used. Embrace the complexity is what i say...

Like everyone else, there must be two back-stories to Hatshepsut, one looking at her personal life and one looking at the society in which she lived. Perhaps because of the focus of what i have read and listened to, or perhaps because of limitations in what egyptologists know (thanks to most archaeological evidence being monuments and papyri created by the ruling class) most of what i've come across focuses on the former. So was Hatshepsut innovating or was changing aspects of gender something other people were doing to? Were men living "like women", were women living "like men"? Is this a sole remaining hint of some ancient revolt against patriarchy on the shores of Northern Africa? Or not at all???

As i said, from what i have found i just don't know, the story being normally framed in terms of the female king's own personal life... But even here there is some stuff of interest...

Throughout all their dynasties the Pharaohs practiced polygyny - the men could have sexual relationships with several women at the same time, established in a hierarchy with one "great wife", multiple other wives, and a number of concubines. While the exact logic of succession is unclear, there is some evidence that is was quasi-matrilineal, with Pharaoship being claimed by marrying the daughter of the great wife; then when her father would die, you would be next in line. (This would, as we shall see, explain the prevalence of brother-sister incest amongst Pharaohs: for the son of a Pharoah marrying his sister would be the only way to assure his "legitimacy".)

In the eighteenth dynasty, about 1500 BC, the Pharaoh Tuthmosis ruled Egypt. His "great wife" Ahmose had three children, two boys and a girl, but the boys and Ahmose herself died before the regent. So while he had sons by his other wives, at the time of his death he had none by his great wife Ahmose, only a twelve year old girl, named Hatsheptsut. So what to do? Well, one of his sons by another wife - also named Tuthmosis (making this the second) - married his half-sister Hatshepsut, and thus made himself king of Egypt.

Tuthmosis II is thought to have been in his twenties when he married his twelve year old half-sister. They would be married for twenty years, and she would become pregnant and give birth to a daughter (Neferu-Ra). This was almost certainly not a good time for her - we can imagine what it would be like for a twelve year old girl to be married to her twenty some year old big brother, and we can note that after he died we have no record of her ever referring to him or honoring him, and that when she later had her tomb built in the Valley of the Kings she had her father's sarcophagus and not her brother/husband's placed beside her within it.

Like his father before him, when Tuthmosis II died he only had one child by his "great wife"/sister Hatshepsut, though he had at least one son by another wife - you guessed it, also named Tuthmosis (he'll be the third). But at the time of his father's death, Tuthmosis III was still a boy, and it is at this point that Hatshepsut made her bid for power, claiming that she herself was king. (Some people have claimed that she imprisoned her nephew/stepson to keep him out ow power, but most now agree it was more likely that she sent him off to train with the military.)

According to most egypologists Hatsheptsup ruled from 1479 to 1458 BC. She is famous for establishing the first zoo in Thebes, and for sending out the first trade expeditions to the land of Punt - modern-day Eritrea - which brought back wild animals and also frankincense trees which from that point on were cultivated on Egyptian soil. She built many monuments and buildings throughout Egypt, including a mortuary temple at Deir el-Bahri on the walls of which she had written the story of her life. While some have tried to claim that her reign was peaceful - unlike most other Pharaohs - there is evidence that she led military expeditions to loot and murder the people of Nubia, the Levant and Syria. (Throughout most of ancient Egyptian history the country's ruing class carried out military expeditions against other African and Near Eastern peoples, sucking in tribute and slaves to supplement its already great agricultural wealth.)

Hatshepsut would never remarry though some egyptologists believe she had a long-term sexual relationship with her daughter's tutor and royal architect, the commoner and "life-long bachelor" Senemut. There is graffiti of the workers who worked on the west bank of Thebes (from 3000 years ago!), showing a woman wearing the crown of Egypt fucking with an overseer - which egyptologists presume were Hatshepsut and Senemut. (Mind you, if we're open to looking at what class and gender politics could have been represented by this female king, i'm not convinced that we need to shoehorn her into having a male lover; i'm equally open to the possibility that Senemut could have been a fag... there is evidence that homosexuality had some place in ancient Egypt...)

What is most interesting to me about Hatshepsut is not her rule, or even simply the fact that a woman maneuvered herself into the seat of power. Whether under a female monarch or a male monarch (like the question of whether ancient Egyptians were "Black" or not) makes little difference to the fact that Egypt represented a murderous and exploitative power, which (like the other States of the ancient world) was continuously waging war against its neighbours in an effort to extract wealth for its own ruling class.

But in terms of politics and what we know of the world that came before us, the story of Hatshepsut is pretty interesting and there is evidence that her reign was not simply the same as those who came before or after, but perhaps represented one set of class or gender politics in contradiction with the others. So while i am certainly no expert on ancient history, it does strike me that there may have been something more here than a woman simply filling male shoes.

We must remain clear that liberation is not even on the menu when we are talking about members of the ruling class, but this does not mean that different class forces don't get expressed through different rulers, and the ruling class can also reflect, albeit in distorted form, changes and movements in the real world. As one indication that this may have been what was going on, unlike other Pharaohs who all claimed to be the literal children of the sun-god Ra, Hatshepsut claimed that the air-god Amun had disguised himself as Tuthmosis and had impregnated her mother. i can't help but mention that at that point Amun was viewed as a patron of justice, being known as the "Vizier of the Poor" - without reading too much into it, isn't it possible that this represented an attempt to tap into or exploit real class contradictions, ones which were certainly laced with gender?

Although there is some evidence that Hatshepsut and Senenmut had been grooming Neferu-Ra to follow in her mother-king's footsteps - there are inscriptions that depict her daughter as a young prince, with a beard and side-lock - the daughter leaves the historical record at the age of eleven, which probably means that she had died. So we know that when Hatshepsut died it was Tuthmosis III - her dead husband's son by another wife - who became Pharaoh.

It is what happened at this point, when Tuthmosis III took over, that provides the most convincing evidence that the life of Hatshepsut reflected real social contradictions which could not be resolved or recuperated after her death.

As already mentioned, Hatshepsut had had her life's story written in her mortuary temple at Deir el-Bahri - but today nowhere on the temple walls can you find her name - everywhere where it was put it has been erased, chiselled away and replaced with one of the three Tuthmosises. You see, it is now known that at some point in his reign Tuthmosis III initiated a campaign to systematically erase all mention of the female king from Egyptian society. Her name was chiselled off of walls, her image destroyed, her friend (or lover) Senemut's sarcophagus was smashed to bits, and even the 90 foot tall obelisks she had had erected were walled in and affixed with the name of a male Pharaoh, so that no one would know what had originally been there.

As Tour Egypt magazine puts it:

Few years after Hatshepsut’s death, "Thotmose III" started his revenge. He started to erase her name, which was so crucial for an ancient Egyptian and constituted an integral part of existence during afterlife. "Thotmose III" started by chiseling the names off the inscriptions, and replaced them by his own, those of "Thotmose I or II" or were left vacant. He aimed to give an impression of the continuity of the three pharaohs’ reign uninterrupted by Hatshepsut. This was followed by defacing her reliefs. Her statues were smashed, burned and soaked in water, particularly those of the "Ka" [similar concept to "soul" - st]. The eyes and nose of the statues were smashed so the deceased queen could not see or breathe in her afterlife, and uraeus (royal cobra placed on the forehead) was smashed too, to deprive her any power.

What "Thotmose III" failed to destroy, he remolded and related to himself. At el-Karnak after destroying her statue sitting beside Amon, the design of the god’s figure did not make any sense. Amon was made to stand instead of sitting, and the base of the smashed queen’s statue was replaced by drawings. On top of one obelisk, the queen was kneeling on her knees, with Amon performing her coronation. Removal of the queen’s figure rendered the god’s hand stretched for no reason, and hence a wand was placed in it. When he could not deface the inscriptions on another obelisk, he simply surrounded it by a high fence. At the top which could not be hidden, he replaced her name and figure with his. In one temple when he failed to coat with gold to hide her name, "Thotmose III" dismantled it. He also usurped the golden gates of her temples and utilized the stones of a temple to tile his orchard. This was disclosed when the name of the queen was later found in its base.

Note that the above section refers to this in personal terms, as Tuthmosis' "revenge" - which is because the main theory used to be that he hated his step-mother for having kept him off the throne for so many years. However, in recent years this theory has been challenged: not only have artifacts been found in which Hatshepsut and Tuthmosis III are shown side by side, but it also seems that the new Pharaoh waited decades into his reign before cleansing the historical record. According to egyptologist Bob Brier this historical vandalism was simply because after Tuthmosis III consolidated his rule it was deemed impolitic to record that a woman had ruled Egypt as king. And so in subsequent years all the "king's lists" which later rulers would make to list their predecessors would never mention Hatshepsut having even existed. Again, the motivations for this seem to have been gender-political - according to the Hapi-Ur resource page on ancient Egypt:

It was not at all uncommon for Egyptian kings to rewrite history to their favor. It should also be noted that the inscriptions depicting the story of Hatshepsut's conception were partially hacked away. It is possible that Thutmosis III or subsequent pharaohs saw her reign as an upset to the balance of ma'at. The role of pharaoh was a role strictly reserved for men, even in a society that offered considerable freedoms to women. By claiming her father was Amun and then coronating herself, Hatshepsut essentially commits blasphemy.

Nothing earth-shattering, and like i said, perhaps no direct relevance to our day-to-day struggles in the here and now... but still, a lot more interesting than simply "a fat woman with rotten teeth", no?

CLICK HERE TO READ ENTIRE POST

COLLAPSE POST

Fundamentalism, Capitalism and Assumptions of the Outmoded

Print PDF

Two laboratory assistants worked in the genetic research lab
at Tehran’s Royan Institute, a jewel of Iran’s science program.

Not to give readers the wrong impression, but the Revolutionary Communist Party (usa) has a useful response to the International Socialists' line on Islamophobia on their Revolution dot com website: U.S. Imperialism, Islamic Fundamentalism... and the need for another way.

i say "useful" and that's a quality i'm appreciating more and more in reading certain things. The idea isn't that i necessarily agree with a piece, or don't even have specific strong disagreements - it's simply that an article or essay that spells out a position clearly, explaining how conclusions were arrived at and the author's train of thought is... well... useful. If only in giving you something to sink your teeth into and agree or disagree with.

Specifically, in regards to this key position by RCP head honcho Bob Avakian:

What we see in contention here with Jihad on the one hand and McWorld/McCrusade on the other hand, are historically outmoded strata among colonized and oppressed humanity up against historically outmoded ruling strata of the imperialist system. These two reactionary poles reinforce each other, even while opposing each other. If you side with either of these ‘outmodeds,’ you end up strengthening both.

While i agree with Bob's conclusion - that siding with either of these poles means strengthening both - i question the terms by which he describes these protagonists.

For one, the relationship between McWorld and McCrusade - if one wants to use those terms - could itself be examined in some depth, showing splits and differences. While Bush and the neo-cons may be seen as the leaders of McCrusade, the borders of McWorld are unclear. Is someone logging in to check out Youtube in Kabul joining McWorld? What if they are logging in to check out the latest video uploads from the Iraqi Resistance? And what if they steal a few minutes after that to check out their fave xxx website?

But leaving aside that question, i am still not convinced that right-wing religious movements in the Third World represent "outmoded classes" defending feudalism. Or perhaps i should ask, has anybody told these guys that they're outmoded yet?

i think this description - shared by many people critical of right-wing anti-imperialism - implies a certain shyness regarding what capitalism is, what patriarchy is, what imperialism is. Historically, the implication is that for all its sins, capitalism represented a "step forward" for feudal Europe, and as such undermined an "outmoded" patriarchal superstitions. We've been brought up with tales of Galileo and Darwin, of a conflict between a hidebound Church and forward thinking scientist-entrepreneurs, and so we have this assumption that theocrats and vulgar patriarchs are somehow opposed to "progress", are defending the "past", and as such must - in the contemporary Third World as in Enlightenment europe - represent "outmoded" classes. Classes which, as Sunsara Taylor explains, "represent old ruling strata in these societies." (my emphasis)

Within europe though, i am thoroughly unconvinced that this was the case. First of all, capitalism in europe incorporated both the cultural and economic profits of the witch-hunt, feeding on the massacre of european women which occurred under the aegis of the supposedly "outmoded" church. Furthermore, as Sylvia Federici has detailed in her book Caliban and the Witch, the rise of mercantilist capitalism involved the violent suppression of popular culture and a real war against women. It was "progressive" european capitalism which resembled the kind of cultural totalitarianism today associated with "outmoded" fundamentalism. Because all these constraints, all this repression, all this destruction of people's culture, were necessary parts of the creation and regimentation of a dependable and exploitable working class.

(While i have not looked into it enough, i can say that a similar process seems to have played out here in Quebec as late as the 19th century, where the suppression/co-optation of popular insurrection was followed by a period of rapid industrialization which coincided precisely with the rise of a vicious and ultra-authoritarian Roman Catholicism, one which has subsequently and incorrectly been described as an inheritance from before the British invasion. But more on that another day!)

First off i remain unconvinced that groups and regimes as diverse as the FIS, Hezbollah, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, the Islamic Republic or Iran and the Taliban all represent the same class forces. There seems to be a real mix there, one which should not be glossed over just because we don't like any of these folks.

Secondly, are all of the classes and political programmes represented by these groups "outmoded" and backwards-looking? As i described above, i think many people feel that once you've proven that these organizations incorporate superstition and patriarchal repression into their programme, you've made that case. But as i have argued, this position is overly simplistic and glosses over the sympathetic relationship between capitalist economic development and cultural and patriarchal repression. It remains willfully blind to the possibility that within this fundamentalist potpourri there may be currents which represent - at one and the same time - both heightened patriarchal repression and a forward-looking programme of capitalist development.

In the end those who believe that fundamentalism can only be regressive teeter on a tightrope, always at risk of falling to one side - conceding that Group X is forward looking and thus must not be so bad after all - or to another - regretfully concluding that imperialism must be playing a positive role as it is opposing the outmoded Group X. Many are those who have fallen.

Much of the "left" statements defending the Islamic Republic of Iran fall into the first category. It is enough to show that Iran has an impressive nuclear programme, a lot of women graduating from university, a commitment to science and industry... and suddenly Khomeini-ist fascism is reduced to a cultural episode, the brutal repression of the working class is a necessary sacrifice for an "anti-imperialist" State, anti-semitism is a hallmark of militancy and dead queers are an uninteresting diversion exaggerated by unprincipled imperialists.

Similarly, for those who fall into the second category it is enough to show that the united states and israel are fighting against this or that right-wing gang to not only prettify imperialism, but capitalism itself. The next stage along that path is the argument that the left and anti-colonial movements are intrinsically anti-semitic and authoritarian. In Germany this error has reached a point that an "anti-german" tendency has lined up to support Bush's war on the Middle East, accusing all who oppose imperial carnage as belonging to the lineage of fascism.

More needs to be said about this, but first more needs to be thought! These are just some sleepy and unfinished observations that i wanted to get out there, perhaps as a reference to some future study. i will be trying to come back to it all soon enough...

Anti-German "anti-fascists" hold
banner calling for solidarity with Israel

CLICK HERE TO READ ENTIRE POST

COLLAPSE POST

Crickets, Science and Rape

Print PDF

Segments about animals are some of the most interesting and subtly political pieces in Quirks and Quarks, the CBC’s national science show. One segment i listened to over the past week – a piece from summer 2005 – provides a case in point.

Under the heading Some Crickets Like It Rough host Bob McDonald interviewed Dr Karim Vahed, a Reader in Behavioural Ecology at the University of Derby, who studies “reproductive conflict” amongst insects.

Dr Vahed has studied a rare kind of Alpine cricket which has abandoned the regular cricket practice of singing for sex, and instead relies entirely on what Vahed and McDonald refer to as “coercive copulation”; what we would normally call violent rape.

No anthropomorphizing here, obviously as insects not people whatever these bugs are doing i have no idea how it is parsed by their consciousness… but i doubt that two woman science-geeks would have the same jovial humorous androcrentric discussion of “coercive copulation.”

Also fizzing in my brain was that if (as Vahed seems to suggest) a reproductive culture based on coercion or consent can be established amongst the same population of insects depending on environmental factors, how much greater must the options be for us humans…

Quirks and Quarks has many many such segments, about spiders or hyenas or whatever and how they fuck or eat or die, and again i gotta stress that i’m not suggesting any socio-biological argument, like “Well, the red back spiders are obviously a matriarchy and the crickets a patriarchy” or any such. But the way in which these different animals are studied and spoken about is of social significance, because whether we like it or not it either reinforces (or subverts) tendencies within our human society to view certain things as “natural” and this superior, or at least unchangeable.

For example, citing the same cricket study by Dr Vahed, BBC published an article under the title Alpine cricket is 'rough lover' in which the male crickets who force sex on female crickets (and even infants) are referred to as a “lothario” and “stallion of the insect world,” in much the same way that McDonald himself referred to their lack of song as a result of their being “so virile they don’t seem to have any time for any of that gentlemanlike behaviour.”

CLICK HERE TO READ ENTIRE POST

COLLAPSE POST