You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
In Jerusalem in January 1988 at the time of the first Intifada, a group of women dressed in black met once a week to gather in silence at a traffic intersection, carrying banners and leaflets on which was written, ‘Stop the Occupation’ of the West Bank and Gaza (p. 83). Women in Black (WIB) - an ‘improvisational strategy’ - was born. Soon the idea and action spread to other towns in Israel; in Italy, groups of women stood against the Mafia; in Germany WIB condemned neo-Nazi attacks on immigrants. In the early 1990s, many WIB groups emerged to oppose violence and advocate justice during the break-up of former Yugoslavia. One of them, Jasmina Tesanovic, a young Serbian, wrote a poem that opened with a claim for life against war: ‘I am loyal to non-violence, solidarity, friendship’ she continued, ‘I sang Bosnian songs and danced Albanian dances throughout the whole war … I am European, a citizen of the world’. In 2001, WIB held 123 actions in different countries. Today (March 2014), their website lists a similar number.
Women in Black is a political response to the wars and catastrophes of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Despite its simple form, Joan Scott suggests in her deeply considered reappraisal of feminist history and politics - silent vigils of women meet at regular intervals to advocate peace and social justice - its political effects are complex. WIB punctures dreams of national unity, exposes the toxicity of ethnic cleansing, insists on mutual recognition, in short WIB ‘speaks truth to power’. The ‘analytics of power’ - Scott quotes political philosopher Wendy Brown - is late twentieth-century feminism's contribution to politics, not the ‘moral infallibility of women’ (p. 70).
If WIB's voice and stance echo the common identity of women claimed by some feminists from early puritans to contemporary radical feminists, then the echo is faint and historical, Scott argues. In 1914, for instance, the Women's International League of Peace and Free