THE SEXUAL CONTRACT

Pateman, Carole. The Sexual Contract. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989.

this by now classic book by Pateman was a conscious pick. having heard, off and on, in various discussions, especially in connection with some of my recent papers, Sexual Contract, i expected, could provide a few corrective arguments. the discussion on the qualified triumph of feminism revolved, in the papers mentioned, around the fulcrum of the contemporary civil society. pateman's perspective, i presume, drives the colloquia out of this circumscription, for she founds her theses on the originary logics of civil society, the contract-theories. her attempt to undo the "most famous and influential political story" of modern times, nevertheless, is essentially a bleak one, almost cancelling all the 'civil' feminist claims and achievements as flawed and merely producing pale reflections of rightful men at their best. the blight begins with the myth of the original social contract of the seventeenth century europe: the myth that asks an exchange of the 'natural' freedom for the assurance of civil protection. pateman spots, and rightfully too, that the contract presupposes domination and subordination in this exchange. she works on the given, 'contract': "social life is nothing more than contracts between individuals." (59) on the vicarious foundation of the original 'civil' contract, actual contracts are made - those of employment, of prostitution, and of marriage. the historical heresy is that a reiteration of these contracts have resurrected the social contract and repressed vehemently the sexual dimensions of the original. the original contract is both social and sexual. in the course of the history of the european civil order, pateman traces a previleging of the narrative of the civil/the public/the masculine as against the corresponding antinomies, natural/the private/feminine resulting in the dissolution of one half of the story. the accepted interpretations of civil order as challenging patriarchal norms withstand analysis only insofar as patraiarchy is centred on its etymological essesntiality: 'rule of the fathers'. the father's authority over the sons is finished; sons move out to serve the state rather than the father; in place of Status, there now is a Contract. and the contract treats everyone as equals, thus resolving the strifes of the older order.

the book is a detailing therefore and thereon of how the contract "far from being opposed to patriarchy, is the means through which patriarchy is constituted." (12) Pateman identifies the newer order of patriarchy as a revised version concurrent with the myth of the social-sexual contract: the father is dissipated - teleogically, patriarchy is nomore a private 'father-driven' archy. patriarchy in its paternal denotation is dead - what is alive, well, and is accounting for the ill of the contemporary civil society is the newer order of fraternity or as she also calls 'fraternal patriarchy'. the sons who fly out of the shades of the father, to the wings of the apparatus of the state, constitute this fraternity.

the omission of woman in the discourses of the original contract, underlies these later actual contracts, and the individual in any contract is not a woman as woman. Pateman problematizes the field further in that even when woman is kept out of the contracts, fraternal patriarchy finds it incumbent on them to incorporate her into the contract as a subordinated subject, as say in the marriage contract. in deeming the marriage and the marriage contract, and in consequence the whole private sphere as 'politically irrelevant', half the original contract is ignored, as said earlier. but the inseperablity of this contract from the social/public/political counterpart opens the cork of newer potions into an already nebulous field of debates. pateman shows from this vantage point why and how the legal recognition in various judiciaries of the rapes by husbands been excruciatingly slow; she argues vehemently how even as prostitution is a "major capitalist industry"(17) it does not realise the consent of woman, to her client, as that of a 'free individual.' in order to consent to the contracts the individual has to be free, and having omitted woman from the category of the 'individual' in the original contract there is no more a chance that it shall happen so. that she is not an individual should reduce her to the level of not being good enough to make contracts, for a contract is made between two equals, and woman is 'naturally' unequal and therefore is outside the contracts. and most paradoxically, women is asked to, and must, enter into one contract, namely the mariage contract. "contract theorists [thus] simultaneously deny and presuppose that women can make contracts." (31) she surveys europe's classic scholarship in contracts, mainly rousseau, locke and hobbes, and holds them culpable for the alarming silence over why marriage contract was validated, even endorsed, when there was an evident fallacy involved. women in the time and space of the classic contract, that is the seventeenth century europe, were deemed naturally lower in nature than men; weak, less wise, and unqualified for politics or public. so, even when there are other ways in which a union between man and his natural subordinate could be established, why should classic contractarins hold that it shall be brought into being through a contract?

this insistence in one sense, spcialises the marriage contract. other contracts, say that of employment for instance, once made, transfer natural relationships to civil societal ones. the relaton of an employer with the worker is seen as a civil, not natural, relation; purely contractual. the curious thing about marriages is that it is not a contract of two 'individuals' but an individual and his 'natural subordinate'. social contracts involving women corrupt thus in the very inception because of this paradox that tags 'natural' into 'civil' orders, and sub/con -sequent relegative measures. in other words, declamations of freedom of woman in the newer civil order is framed by the meanings of patriarchalism, and therefore she is simultaneously free and not free. pateman pronounces that the balmy hogwash has already run neck-high and there isn't a way to wish it away, but the grand rejections within the liberal contractual politics that has eventuated in 'civil' - isation. pateman's eye for the sops of patriarchal myths for the feminist ends, and her consistency in perspective of the contractual nature of social relations bring her thesis loud and clear through the obscure chapters on european and american histories of contracts.

SPACING MUSEUMS: RUSSIAN ARK

Russian Ark (Russkiy kovcheg) (2002) Directed by: Alexander Sokurov

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The intersecting of two secrecies results in interesting, however unpleasant may it be, revelations. When the hidden-away in a museum and the clandestine byways of history overlap visibly, it results in a rather violent exposure of the collective insecurity. Russia has taken much from Europe, like most of the East has done, when it comes to (modern disciplines of) academic/fine arts. In this case, however, there is one qualification: that Russia in itself is considered to be European in essence. Let us return to this point later, but.

Archiving being a modern necessity – as ‘an art of the state’, say – in terms with the sense of nation and people-as-kin, museums hold a veritable mode to relate to what is stored (and distributed) as culture, in the post-industrialist society.

What qualifies some specimens to be inside a museum of culture and what goes into the historiography of the nation are both important nodes of enquiry when thinking about reading the peoples’ consciousness vis-à-vis a museum. Museums are important spots in the map of a city: not-too-infrequently, even the centre of it. Always listed in the places-to-be-visited, regarded as landmarks, and entry restricted with passes or security checks, they make a cult of authority in their sit(e)uation. These buildings pride in imposing architectural feats and the ‘rarity’ of the specimens preserved. A metropolis is incomplete without a museum (or an archive of equable gravity) and the people therein connect to it in much the same way as they connect to public libraries and court circles. Even if they never see the inside of it, for an urban population, the building connotes a space of modernity, a mark of progress, and a record of ‘culture’.

The museum is a reservoir of time. You swish past into the beginnings and flash down into the current, within its space. Inside a real time, vicarious times dangle in tempting threads. And simultaneously, within a real space, tangible records of spaces that existed are pre-served. They belong to the public by belonging to the state. It is always a display, an invitation to think in time, and never a sell-out. You don’t own anything in a museum as a person. Your right over it, as said, is reserved in your being a citizen who abides by the state. The exhibits therein hold its magic over you by being your past and not belonging to you, directly. You will have to link up with nation/kin/citizen/subject paradigms to ‘possess’ it.

Having said that let me come to Russian Ark. The Russia herein is a brilliant spacious block, and not the space of the scantily lit congested wooden-walls of the potato eaters. We, for one, are fetched far from the politics that is Russia (to the Indian leftists, at least) and the inscrutable tongue that is Russian. We are removed from anything unlike the European inheritance in Russia. We are shut out to the toil, revolt, and terror that paved the Karamazov homestead. And we see the pretentious bourgeoisie socials that drove Anna to death, ironically, gaining an elevated splendor here. With bated breath we peep into the intrigues of (bourgeoisie) history, savor high art, and attend studious classical western music.

It is a (Russian) ghost who is taking us through the grand (which is a minor word to describe it) museum of St Petersburg. And very unfortunately, he is accompanying a not-so-Russophile European (Marquis de Custin who authored La Russie en 1839, as we are told in the glosses) who thinks Russia in fact is a veneer of Europe spread over Asian rocks. For Custin, all composers are German and all masters of sculpture and painting, Italian. Being extremely religious, the splendid collection of paintings in the given museum, for him, is a blasphemy, mostly: he shows how the Circumcision of Christ is placed together with the licentious Portrait of Cleopatra, for an instance. And practically terrifies an adolescent who admits that he is not a Catholic. Not being a Catholic, Custin says, it is impossible to appreciate a portrait of Paul and Peter. Custin, sure, is pictured as a very insolent figure and is thrown out from the courtly gatherings almost always. He knows that he would be hurting the feelings of the narrator when he derides Pushkin and is cognizant of his appalling-prank in putting the back of a blind Russian woman against a painting asking her to accost it, but doesn’t stop from doing either.

Starkly in contrast with the rest of the flamboyant cast, Custin wears an arrogant black costume. And considers whoever else in the milieu as mere ‘costumes’ and ‘actors’. The whole of Russian history is a ‘theatre’ for him. And instead of disproving Custin, the drama of Russian Ark stays away from any jolts of reality that can upset his tirade (or the audience's dream-journey). Very significant to this point, at almost the middle of the cinema, the author begs the Marquis to not open a door, which concealed empty painting-frames and snow and a “desperate Leningrader” (cf. wiki) working hard on his own coffin. In yet another scene, situated in the Stalinist phase, we spy the museum officials thinking about renovating certain portions of the museum. The grand ball conducted by Valery Gergiev and the subsequent exit of the whole cast through the front door, winds up the sequence.
But the coda, I believe, is that exit which the ghost takes, where we see myriad specters of fog rising from a frigid sea that surrounds the museum. The ark that is the St Petersburg museum is floating in a frozen sea. In other words, all history outside the museum is dead history, issuing ghosts (like the narrator) that nostalgically live up to the Russian nationalist dream, inside the museum.

The technical achievement in shooting a 90 minute film all at one go, assembling a cast of 2000 and sorting innumerable costumes is the most talked-about aspect of Russian Ark, as I glanced through the reviews. I am not underplaying Alexander Sokurov’s feat by any means. The magical flow of the single shot (canned by Tilman Buettner) does have its place in film history, I understand. Just that, more important to my viewing was the thrill imparted by feeling the cult-space of the museum perpetually challenging the ‘timely-ness’ of any archive.

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For a fuller discussion of the plot and the feat, the review is available at: http://www.kinokultura.com/reviews/Rark.html

the Reader & the Voyeur

The Reader (Bernhard Schlink's 1995 novel, Der Volser, in original German as translated by CB Janeway), as they claimed in the blurb, does deal with morality in a very complicated way. it is after a considrable interval that i am reading a novel again. and this, being a 'page-turner' after all, was finished in a day. the novel, one has to admit, is overtly graphic. if the reader himself/herself has not been visual-ising the scenes as the events unfold in minute detail, the author insists him/her in doing so by installing Hanna's 'poses' all the way through the narration. those moments where Berg prints down Hanna in his mind: when she puts on the silk-stocking in the other room and fixes it to her garter belts meticulously (he watches it through the door indeliberately left ajar), or when she stands with a towel for him after his shower(he could only imagine what she looked like then, for she was behind him), or when she hazily perambulates in his father's study (his presence unacknowledged), in those moments at least, the pictures freeze within the sequence of words. even when Berg himself does not see Hanna, the reader of their story must see her. and consequently, the reader must feel her as beyond the written. in fact the novel does underplay the power of words as they are written, all the way. it is either the Voices or the Pictures that command the truth, here. voices are emotions served hot, perpetually. and pictures, resolving the semiotic intricacies of words all too dextrously, tower above both voice and writing. but this is not what i want to think through after reading Schlink's work.
it is the ease with which the characters disappeared from the mind's screen and of the something-else that lingered. talking of the disappeared people, i didnt want Hanna at least to fade away that soon. i wanted her to stay on. to puzzle on, as she used to, through out my reading of the work. but may be because she grew old and "smelt" of old age; may be because she grew fat and lumbered across her cell; because she, midway through her term, lost the fire of self-righteousness, because she no more cared about the why-she-should-care, she faded off from the montage all too soon like the ineffectual "reader" (Berg) himself. and i was left with nothing to write home about, but a vague feeling of disturbance. the kind of disturbance that a voyeur feels when the looked-upon looks back at him, kind of knowingly. to discuss killings as if it is a process necessitated by policies, and to dismiss policies as belonging to a period's specific needs and calls, the reader confuses "understanding" and "condemnation", by fondly juxtaposing the body of justice with the body that defines the protagonist's sexuality. Hanna is that open invitation for Berg to "forget the world in the recesses of the body" (p.16). world (as a condition of being answerable), body and guilt move in disturbing loops as eroticism is deftly instilled at unexpected leeks in time (Berg's hepatitis and the vomit, and their ending up in bed in the first chapter, for instance).
there must be a way in which the holocaust, as a word, unassumingly covers all the real - palpable - pain and reduces the choking-to-death, burning-to-death, and hacking-to-death, all to an Event. given the opening to it, through the court scenes in the text, the readers - including Berg, the second generation German - are invited to 'look' and be a (meta-)part of the trial: the 'view' to the time's ruptures - to the "past that brands us and with which we must live". stranded morally in between condemning the self and condemning the past, the novel is a crevice that puts the reader/voyeur behind it. necessitated by the past into attending the trial (necessitated by erotic drives towards the event); all too curious, but simultaneously totally aware of the culmination ( as how a voyeur doesn't really see 'different' events/things every time, but still see them as different), trying to repress the condemnation of the self and immerse in the degradation of the accused (like how the pleasure of looking is suddenly more real than the guilt of the agent of the look) the justice mechanism, as described in the book, turns holocaust into an 'event' circumscribed by the word, not withstanding the descriptions of the church in fire. it invites the non-German reader into watching. the obvious metaphor of Hanna Schmidtz's illiteracy for the un-speak/writ-ability of the horror of holocaust, augments the conversion of real feelings to the vicarious see-and-feel equation. she speaks with her body, in total. she, being the guard who has not written the order which the court considers, dissociates herself from the written code, while ironically becomes the crucible of a written message. she claims to know what "idiocy" is, and her shower-read-have sex routine with the 'kid' is pictured as a leap to transcend it. life and its truth and idiocy is coded in Hanna's body. it is in watching it, freezing it, adoring it, and constantly (without much reason to) apologising to it, that the mind of 'the reader' shapes itself. the figure of the guilty voyeur is implicit. the "recesses" of (Hanna's) body holds not only the world(of Berg) but also a tempting invitation to watch the world as it is held. it dilutes the guilt of being inside any other world (the post Third Reich Germany or the post WW II world, say). to feel a share of guilt for the ruthlessness perpetrated by the human world is subterfuged by the reader's merging with the voyeur. breeding voyeurs of history in schools, colleges, in libraries, in intellectual discussions, in judiciary and in the media, perhaps, this is how we have been successfully disowning our share in what went past.