Pornographie Voice: Critical feminist practices among Sri Lanka's female garment workers

Feminist Studies

Volumn 32, Issue 1, 2006, Pages 125-154

  Hewamanne, Sandya ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33745649234     PISSN: 00463663     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/20459075     Document Type: Review

References (60)

1. According to Lynda Nead, "Above the Pulpline: The Cultural Significance of Erotic Art," in Dirty Looks: Women, Pornography, Power, ed. Pamela Gibson and Roma Gibson (London: British Film Institute, 1993), 148, erotic art's emphasis on form over matter is what differentiates it as high culture and pornography as a low art form. Priyadari paid scant attention to form when publishing readers' sexually explicit narratives. Some authors consider any story containing a succession of sexual acts connected by a narrative thread and representing some transgression of norms as erotic writings.
2. See Susan Suleiman, "Pornography, Transgression, and the Avant-Garde: Bataille's Story of the Eye," in The Poetics of Gender, ed. Nancy Miller (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), 117-36;
3. Lucienne Frappier-Mazur, "Marginal Cannons: Rewriting the Erotic," Yale French Studies, no.75 (1988): 112-28. Although Suleiman's and Frappier-Mazurth's description closely resemble the writings in Priyadari, I choose to use the former definition when deciding to identify these writings as pornographic.
4. Malathi De Alwis, "Gender, Politics, and the 'Respectable Lady,'" in Unmaking the Nation: The Politics of Identity and History in Modern Sri Lanka, ed. Pradeep Jeganathan and Qadri Ismail (Colombo: Social Scientists' Association, 1995);
5. Malathi De Alwis, "Maternalistic Politics in Sri Lanka: A Historical Anthropology of Its Conditions of Possibility" (Ph.D. diss., department of Anthropology, University of Chicago, 1998).
6. Media and everyday discourses characterize premarital sex, multiple partners, and clandestine sexual activities in public places such as movie theaters and parks, as "perverse" or "deviant." The Sinhala terms usually used in this context are "asabhya" and "aseelachara."
7. Dabindu Collective, A Review of Free Trade Zones in Sri Lanka (Boralesgamuwa: CRC Press, 1997), 17.
8. Kumudhini Rosa, "Women Workers' Strategies of Organizing and Resistance in the Sri Lankan Free Trade Zone (FTZ)," South Asia Bulletin 10, no.l (1990): 33-43.
9. This may have added to the discontent of the Tamil youth which escalated in a viscious civil war a few years after the establishment of the first FTZ in Katunayake.
10. Janice Fine and Matthew Howard, "Women in the Free Trade Zones of Sri Lanka," Dollars and Sense, no. 202 (November-December 1995): 26-27, 39-40.
11. Dabindu Collective, Prathiba (Boralesgamuwa: CRC Press, 1989);
12. Dabindu Collective, A Review of Free Trade Zones in Sri Lanka (Boralesgamuwa: CRC Press, 1997);
13. Fedric Ebert Stiftung, Diriya Diyaniyo (Colombo: Fedric Ebert Stiftung, 1997);
14. Sandya Hewamanne and James Brow, "'If They Allow Us We Will Fight": Strains of Consciousness among Women Workers in the Katunayake Free Trade Zone," Anthropology of Work Review 19 (Spring 1999): 8-13.
15. Gananath Obeyesekere, The Cult of the Goddess Pattini (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 504-5.
16. The magazine also carries many articles written by housemaids working in Middle Eastern countries. In this article, however, I focus only on the writings of FTZ workers and the way they are depicted in others' stories. Because the vast majority of FTZ workers are single (unlike Middle East migrants who typically are married), the workers' association with the magazine represents a more severe critique of existing social and cultural norms that constrain their lives.
17. Dabindu activist, Chamila, once complained that thanks to Priyadari, FTZ workers now know what Fostino 2 (the morning-after pill) is, although they are woefully ignorant about their own body functions and healthy living.
18. The photos, however, are less aggressive and exposing than the stories and seem to be directed toward a male clientele. Several FTZ workers expressed their displeasure with the photographs, saying that they did not match the stories.
19. Workers and employers contribute a certain percentage of the monthly salary to this fund. A gratuity payment or the leaving bonus is decided by each factory, although it usually amounts to one year's salary-a sum that can form a sizeable dowry.
20. Although authors use pseudonyms, soldiers will identify their military unit and the specific camps where they are stationed. This is important because once a story is published, especially the ones allegedly sent by military men and the police, many women respond to the authors seeking romantic relationships, and their letters usually get published with their mailing addresses.
21. In the Sinhala language the term innocent (ahinsaka) denotes different meanings in different contexts. When talking about personal traits it means nonviolent, although in this instance, and usually when used in the context of male-female relationships and cultural issues, it means a naive person devoid of sexual knowledge.
22. An FTZ worker gave me this story which she had clipped from a year 2000 issue of Priyadari (there was no date on the clipping).
23. Priyadari, 3 Mar. 2003.
24. Priyadari, 28 fan. 2000.
25. He uses the term deiya (the masculine form of god) twice to address her. This is interesting because in earlier periods women in certain regions used the term deiyo to address their husbands. It is important to note that while the women used the plural form deiyo for their husbands, he uses the singular form deiya for his wife. This still is an unusual honorific for a wife, especially because it is a masculine term.
26. When this story was read at Saman's boarding house, where I conducted most of my research, all the women present thought that the young woman faked ignorance regarding sexual matters to earn the husband's respect and admiration, because sexual ignorance is considered a male fantasy.
27. Priyadari publishes readers' responses to these stories. Readers write short letters addressing a particular author and express how they were touched by a story and that they would like to get to know the author. These letter writers will usually include their addresses asking the particular author to start corresponding. Sometimes there are two or three responses to a story. Women also respond to men's (especially soldiers') sad stories. Almost all of the magazines issues I analyzed featured readers' letters, and at least one or two letters per magazine contained such invitations for soldiers with disabilities.
28. I found one male homosexual love story within the analyzed issues and one story of lesbian desire and betrayal in a much later issue (21 Jan. 2004, p. 13). The latter story followed the pattern of stories about heterosexual betrayals, in that it begged the magazine to publish the story soon so the woman concerned would read it before her marriage to a man.
29. Some Priyadari writers used what seemed like real names (with initials and long surnames and addresses), but this happened only in cases where women wrote about their sad love affairs in which they committed nothing culturally unacceptable beyond getting involved in a romantic relationship or in which they experienced domestic violence. It was obvious that the authors of these stories wanted other men or women to start communicating with them. I wrote to two of these authors stating my desire to meet them and talk about their lives for academic purposes, but I received no response. Men published their names, military personnel numbers, and locations of their army camps when they wrote rebuttals to women's stories expressing their allegiance to extremely moralistic and rigid notions of women's behavior. However, when they wrote about getting cheated by women they almost always used pseudonyms (usually initials), most probably to shield them from the shame associated with being betrayed. They may have also feared repercussions from the army or the police forces, which are also characterized by outwardly moralistic and heterosexual family-oriented policies.
30. Elizabeth Long, "Textual Interpretation as Collective Action," in Viewing, Reading, Listening. Audiences and Cultural Reception, ed.) Jon Cruz and Justin Lewis (Oxford, U.K.: Westview Press, 1994), 209;
31. Brian Stock, The Implications of Literacy: Written Language and Models of Interpretation in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Princeton, N.).: Princeton University Press, 1983).
32. Janice Radway "Beyond Mary Bailey and Old Maid Librarians: Reimagining Readers and Rethinking Reading," Journal of Education for Library and Information Science 35 (Fall 1999): 287.
33. For a discussion of this process, see Sandya Hewamanne, "Performing Dis-Respectability: New Tastes, Cultural Practices, and Identity Performances by Sri Lanka's Free Trade Zone Garment Factory Workers," Cultural Dynamics 15 (March 2003): 71-101.
34. When I visited a different boarding house in 2003 the residents there claimed that Priyadari's popularity had declined and newer magazines like Vandana, Bhavana, and Nirmala, which are much less pornographic in content, had taken its place as the workers' favorite magazine. However, women do not usually acknowledge their attraction to pornographic magazines until they start to trust a newcomer, which may take a few weeks to several months. Also the kind of boarding house one resides in facilitates or hinders the reading of pornographic magazines. This particular boarding house owner spent most of her time in the back verandah observing her charges and told me that Priyadari is a bad magazine that further corrupts the workers.
35. Tania Modleski, loving with a Vengeance: Mass Produced Fantasies for Women (Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1982);
36. Janice Radway, Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984).
37. Priyadari, 21 Jan. 2004, 1, 5.
38. Kanchana, group discussion, Katunayake, 27 Feb. 2000.
39. Interview with author, 9 Nov. 1999
40. Group discussions and individual interviews conducted in Katunayake, January-July 2000.
41. Sujani, Dayani, and others, group discussion, Katunayake, 5 Mar. 2000.
42. Luxmi, quoted in my journal entry, Katunayake, 23 Apr. 2000.
43. A vast number of middle-class women never get to read these magazines. Usually it is Harold Robbins, or the Mills and Boon series of romance novels, or similar Sinhala novels that middle-class women read. These books are considered harmless because they do not contain the kind of pornographic descriptions prevalent in Priyadari. Because Priyadari is considered a magazine for the lower classes, even men seem reluctant to buy or be seen with it. My cousin, who had to buy Priyadari for me when I was out of the country, complained bitterly that he had to hide it inside his shirt in fear that one of his friends at work would detect it.
44. Group discussions, Katunayake, 27 Feb. 2000, 5 Mar. 2000, 30 Apr. 2000.
45. Ajitha, group discussion, Katunayake, 27 Feb. 2000.
46. Juki is the name of a Japanese industrial sewing machine, commonly used in Sri Lankan garment factories. "Juki pieces" (Juki Kelt) is a term created by combining the sewing machine's brand name and the cloth they assemble (called keli, or "pieces"), thus objectifying female industrial workers based on their particular work.
47. Siriya, group discussion, Katunayake, 5 Mar. 2000.
48. Dayani, group discussion, Katunayake, 5 Mar. 2000.
49. Priyadari, 12 Mar. 2003, 11.
50. Lynne Segal, "Does Pornography Cause Violence? The Search for Evidence," in Dirty Looks, 5-21;
51. and also her "Pornography and Violence: What the 'Experts' Really Say," Feminist Review 36 (Autumn 1990): 29-41;
52. and Susan H. Gray, "Exposure to Pornography and Aggression toward Women: The Case of the Angry Male," Social Problems 29 (April 1982): 387-98.
53. Pradeep Jeganathan, "A Space for Violence: Anthropology, Politics, and the Location of a Sinhala Practice of Masculinity," in Community, Gender, and Violence: Subaltern Studies, vol. 11, ed. Partha Chatterjee and Pradeep Jeganathan (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 115.
54. Segal, "Does Pornography Cause Violence?" 15.
55. Sandya Hewamanne, "Stitching Identities: Work, Play, and Politics among Sri Lanka's Free Trade Zone Garment Factory Workers" (Ph.D. diss., University of Texas at Austin, 2002).
56. Kamran Ali, "Pulp Fictions: Reading Pakistani Domesticity," Social Text 22 (Spring 2004): 123-45.
57. Hewamanne, "Performing Dis-Respectability," 71-101.
58. Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement Taste, trans. Richard Nice (London: Routledge, 1984).
59. Kamala Visweswaran, Fictions of Feminist Ethnography (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994);
60. Shahnaz Rouse, "Gender Nationalism(s) and Cultural Identity: Discursive Strategies and Exclusivities," in Embodied Violence, ed. Kumari Jayawardena and Malathi de Alwis (New Delhi: Kali Press for Women, 1996), 42-70.