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Editor's Note: Rafia Zakaria is the author of "The Upstairs Wife: An Intimate History of Pakistan" (Beacon 2015) and "Veil" (Bloomsbury 2017). He is a columnist for the newspaper "Dawn" in Pakistan and The Baffler. The opinions expressed in this article are specific to the author.
(CNN) - In her recently published memoir "Memories of My Non-Existence," Rebecca Solnit considers the process of self-creation.
In lyrical and luminous prose, Solnit leads readers in the early 1980s to her first apartment, one that (as a young single woman) could only be rented after the lease was signed and executed on behalf of his mother; He also had to pay the rent in his mother's name. Solnit recalls that one of the employees of the rental company "dropped my application to the trashcan next to his desk while I was looking" when he first presented it with his name.
The precariousness of this position, his inability to live under his own name and the fear of losing the apartment if what he had done was detected, is the framework of "non-existence" that Solnit describes throughout the book.
From there begins an exploration of the tensions between learning to be a woman in the world, a world that constantly acted to erase women.
Solnit is the author of more than 20 books, including "Wanderlust," nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award and "Call Them for Their Real Names," winner of the 2018 Kirkus Nonfiction Award. She wrote "Men Explain Things To. Me ”, an essay that explains the phenomenon of what is now commonly known as“ mansplaining ”, and that alludes to the condescending way in which some men address women.
The exploration of violence in Solnit's book and its impact on women's self-transformation is particularly appropriate at a time when quarantine and isolation have left many in abusive situations without the recourse they would have in normal times. Like those women and children of today, locked in their safe havens in a world crushed by a pandemic, Solnit also inhabited "an inside-outside world where everything was safe except the house." Solnit begins chapter three with memories of her life as a child and how they shaped her later life: “I had never been safe, but I think part of the horror that hit me was because for some years I thought it could be, that violence male was contained in the home. "
Beyond our current situation, however, feminism - critically - has progressed. Questions about what has changed and what should continue to be at the center of our focus as we strive for progress were the subjects of my conversation with Solnit. We spoke on March 19, the first day of California Governor Gavin Newsom's "stay home" order in the Bay Area where Solnit lives.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and fluency.
Rafia Zakaria: Why did you decide to write this book and why did you decide to write it now?
Rebecca Solnit: "Memories of my non-existence" is an exercise to revisit familiar land in a new way. I have been writing about the voice and the consequences of the voice, that is, those who have very little and are silenced and those who have too much and have the ability to silence others. I wanted to consider who can be trustworthy and truthful.
I wanted to consider what it means to live in a world where living means that men can hurt you.
When she was young, she constantly faced the threat of being erased and couldn't find anyone to answer that. At the time I wrote it, I was really alone and the men wanted to hurt me. They hurt women just for the simple fact that they were women.
I wanted to consider the inner experience of this and how it affects the psyche. It was later that I realized that I was suffering from the classic symptoms of post-traumatic stress, which we recognize in soldiers returning from war, but hardly ever recognize in women.
In this sense, the book intertwined two tensions (of my life): the individual story of acquiring an audible voice, of investigating and thinking about these issues, and that of (being) an ordinary young woman facing threats, harassment and lack of people take it seriously.
Zakaria: In chapter one, you write: "I see young women around me fighting the same battles." Does this depress you? You mean there has been no progress?
Solnit: Feminism brings me face to face with the life of women, high profile and low profile. ... I feel like the weirdo that connects these dots in an ubiquitous way. I trace the curve of the epidemic of violence against women in space and time.
I think feminism has accomplished extraordinary things. The “we” has changed since I was young, there are women who are judges, representatives, and deans, there are women who are assignment editors.
Men have also changed, and women are considered equal in credibility and audibility. So on the one hand I see the horror and on the other I see changes in the way the law is applied and the awareness of rights, consent and violations of consent. The complex social dynamics that allow violence to continue are also being disrupted.
Zakaria: Today is the first day of the "confinement" order in California. How are you making sense of this pandemic, considering that much of your writing has focused on catastrophe and eventual reconciliation?
Solnit: I'm doing this from reading fairy tales on Facebook and today we will see the Minotaur (a monster half bull half man, imprisoned in the maze until an Athenian hero named Theseus kills him with the help of a woman named Ariadne). I will make everyone think of the Minotaur from Ariadne's perspective and then the myth ends up being very different and interesting and also a political story when viewed from different perspectives. [Note: Solnit has suspended its fairy tale readings for now.]
Perspective is important. In the book I wrote before this ("This is the story: old conflicts, new chapters," the story of how the new American narrative is more progressive than some people think), I discovered that a number of right-wing people were constantly talking immigration from the perspective of the people whose communities immigrants and refugees had reached, but never from the perspective of those who had emigrated. It is not much different from the rape stories, which are told from the rapist's perspective.
As for the insulation itself, I know that many white-collar people like me will be fine. As a San Francisco resident, I take long walks alone all the time and as a writer, I have been at home 32 years.
I cannot help looking at my neighbors in a different way, who has just been fired, who will suffer the harsh consequences of the financial crisis. There are people who live around me who drive taxis, who work in retail, are musicians and actors and they will all be seriously affected. I just have the feeling that a lot of people are being hit so hard and it's heartbreaking. The size of this catastrophe (economic and psychological) is unprecedented in the (modern) history of the United States.
As we live it, we are learning what work is really essential. The requirements to be separated are very difficult for many: writers can joke about social isolation and how it is easier for introverts, but apart from jokes, a reorientation is underway.
Zakaria: Regarding violence against women, it is often said that "the injury is private but the antidote is public." To what extent is failure to build a collective feminist movement responsible for failure to change society enough that domestic violence is no longer a threat? Do you think it is because feminists have not made violence against women a political problem and a political movement?
Solnit: This is a complex question. When I was young, domestic violence was not recognized as a public problem, everything was in the private sphere. The police and legal system never intervened in matters of domestic violence, it was also joked: it can be seen in old movies like "The Taming of the Shrew" (based on the play by William Shakespeare).
Feminists have made it a public problem. The police today respond to calls for domestic violence and we have changed the law over and over again to make it a public issue. It used to be the victim's responsibility to testify against the abuser because she was the one facing the violence.
I think there are some very important layers of progress. Shelters have been opened for victims of domestic violence and maintaining them remains a feminist issue. The transformation we ultimately need as a society is (to get to a place) where it does not occur to men that they have the right or the desire to harm women.
We are in a radically different place from what we were; We are involved in a process that is in the early stages and involves a legal and social change, but above all, a cultural transformation. We have emphasized that women free themselves from men, and had really accepted the idea that this was something that women had to do. But I realize that we must demand that men participate and discover that men are also going to be liberated in this process.
One of the most important sections of the book is the one that considers what it meant to grow up as a white, straight woman among black gay men who had rejected the social norms of the time. (For Solnit, living as a young woman among so many black and gay men taught her important lessons such as that one did not have to conform to the social norms preached by the majority to live a happy and full life. She also learned the importance of mutual aid. and how to survive in a hostile world.) Liberation is contagious and called me to liberate myself and adopt new ways to organize my life.
Zakaria: In the book it says: "I wanted to trace the lost patterns that occurred before the world broke and find new ones that we could form with the fragments." What do you mean by that?
Solnit: The very principle of creative work is to create new stories and break old ones. Telling the history of slavery or colonialism from a white perspective is not new, nor is it new that the stories of women are told by men.
There are important questions here. Who is trustworthy? Who has credibility? Are we here to listen to whom? Often, politics on the surface does not give us the full story: what is the story or what is important.
I have written about it, very politically in stories about climate and nature.
When I was young, I started spending a lot of time with Native Americans and realized that their creation myths are very different from Judeo-Christians, where we fall from Eden and sin overwhelms us and everything really sucks. What is really interesting and what I thought was great about the Native American myths is that the world is never perfect. The world is often made up of several gods who are collaborative and also argumentative: perfection is not necessary as a category, and that made me see how often we apply the binary equation the perfect against the fallen. Instead, they have complex human stories.
The breakup can be a creative act.
Zakaria: How do you understand the role of being an author, given the disparity of power between those who write and those who have a voice?
Solnit: The important thing about being a writer is that there are no objective criteria, each book and each writing is a conversation that has no beginning or end. The job of telling the story is everyone's job.
This question has to do with the “Best American Essays”, which I edited in 2019. I chose the best but I was also quite committed to not producing another book like most white men. I didn't have to compromise in any way to do that. The Anglo-centrist narrative needs to be interrupted, and that often depends on ignoring some people.
Zakaria: You wrote your famous essay "Hope in the Dark" when the Iraq bombing started in 2003. Could you write a similar essay now, do you think there is still hope in the dark?
Solnit: Could you be so hopeful now? There is uncertainty and possibility at all times: the optimist says that everything will be fine and the pessimist says that everything is lost. Hope is the expression of the deep uncertainty of what could happen, sometimes we can make a difference and other times the "we" is idealistic. I still have some hope… it seems as if what is protecting us is something from the clarity of the future.
coronavirus, feminism