Orphans' or Veterans? Justice for Children Born of War in East Timor

All over East Timor, one can find “orphans” whose parents still live, and “wives” who have never been married. These labels mask an open secret in Timorese society—hundreds of babies were born of rape during the Indonesian occupation from 1974 to 1999. In juxtaposition, as a result of the 2004 UNFPA-conducted census, there is finally data available on the current population of East Timor and it has unexpectedly revealed a baby boom, perhaps in response to the emotional losses of the occupation. The fertility rate was found to be the highest in the world, at 8.3 babies per woman.1 The baby as the symbol of both wound and healing is clearly at play in Timor at the present time. Nonetheless, there is official silence on the number and treatment of the children born of conflict, a lack of attention in the transitional justice mechanisms in place in Timor in regard to the human rights violations that produced their situation, and no official policies to deal with the needs of these children or their mothers, or the discrimination they may face. The challenge posed by these children and women to the social fabric of Timor reveals important gaps and silences within the international human rights law framework which might nonetheless be addressed by some fairly straightforward policy innovations. In this paper, I argue that status of the mothers socially and legally, as it impacts on the well-being and ability of the children to claim their rights, needs to be more fully addressed in transitional justice debates. Within Timor, there is a definite ambivalence about the idea of these women as contributors to independence during the occupation, and discomfiture regarding their status as so-called “wives” of Indonesian military. This cultural construction is both exacerbated and challenged by the ambivalent influence of Catholic teachings on East Timorese society. Nonetheless, social currents also exist that, if strategically used to reconstruct the image of these children and women, could more effectively reframe their trauma in transitional justice discourse, and contribute both to their well-being and the long-term process of reconciliation in East Timor. The paper proceeds in two sections. First, I first provide an overview of the situation of sexual violence survivors and their children in East Timor. In the second section I discuss current approaches to the children and their mothers within the transitional justice mechanisms available in East Timor at this time. I aim to shift the current approach to children born of war in Timor from covert welfare assistance by the Catholic Church and NGOs, to a rights-based framework, where the affected children are publicly accepted with valid claims on the Government, rather than seen as by-products of a crime or sin. From this analysis it becomes clear that creative policy and legal options are required that would assist these families with integration, status and financial security. I conclude with one such proposal to improve the situation of these families: re-characterise the affected women and their children as “veterans” of the conflict, with the same status as the former Falintil guerrillas.La

From motherhood to maternal subjectivity

In this paper I try to work out what would be involved - and what would be some of the implications - in moving from the idea of motherhood to maternal subjectivity (which I theorise through the lens of unconscious intersubjectivity). Motherhood connotes a natural state or condition which functions as an empty category into which children’s needs can be placed. Using feminist and post-structuralist critiques and building upon British and feminist psychoanalysis, I theorise developments in subjectivity and the capacity to care that are made possible by certain characteristics of the relationship with a developing child, characteristics which change over time. More specifically I explore the concepts of maternal ambivalence, containment, recognition and maternal development - all ways of understanding the specific workings and effects of unconscious intersubjective dynamics - in the context of asking how maternal subjectivity is constituted. In this way, the subject of inquiry is shifted from mothers to mothering. This conceptualisation of maternal subjectivity aims to go beyond subjectivity as subjectification and mothers as the objects of children’s needs (or, more recently, rights) and also beyond the idea of mothers as ‘autonomous’ subjects in their own right (to the extent that the idea of autonomy is one deriving from the rational unitary subject of modernism). Throughout I use the politically relevant theme of who can and should mother to inquire into the boundaries of maternal subjectivity and thus as a lens through which to illuminate the relations among mothering, fathering, parenting, primary caring and caring in general. I discuss the effects of these dynamics on adult subjectivities in general

Metropolitan mothers: Mothers, mothering and paid work

This paper reports on the interim findings from a two year ESRC (Economic and Social Research Council) -funded project exploring parental choice of child care for pre school children. The fieldwork is based in two predominantly middle class areas in London. The vast majority of the respondents to date are women, many of whom are in paid employment. This paper draws on the literature about mothering, motherhood and identity to explore how these professional middle class women experience shifts in their self-identity. It considers how the women respond to the emotional and physical labour required of them by their roles as both worker and mothers, how they negotiate the tensions between the two, and how couples adapt to managing employment, childcare and a household. It also briefly considers the childcare roles and practices of the fathers. It concludes that despite the social and economic advantages of these middle class families, the adults are not presenting a serious challenge to a traditional understanding of family relationships

Unspeakable Desire To See, And Know : Paradise Regained And The Political Theology Of Privacy

In this essay, Eric B. Song considers the artistic, religious, and political value of privacy in Paradise Regained. The topic of privacy condenses Milton\u27s thinking about gender and sexuality, domesticity, the fraught work of publishing intimate truths, and the relationship between Christian and Hebraic modes of religious polity. The depiction of privacy in Paradise Regained relates not only to Milton\u27s earlier poetry and prose but also to twentieth-century theories of private and public life that contrast classical and modern societies. The productive friction between Milton\u27s religious convictions and his advocacy for personal liberty speaks to controversies that persist in present-day American politics

Bemberg’s Third Sex: Argentine Mothers at the Dawn of Democracy

The early features of Argentine director María Luisa Bemberg, Momentos and Señora de nadie, underscore the deployment of an ideology of motherhood in service of bourgeois social structure and military dictatorship. In these films, Bemberg posits the institution as balancing between containment and rebellion, her protagonists confronting the traditional ideological role of mother and asserting a stance against the repression of the waning dictatorship. Although entrenched in a conventional film discourse, these films set into motion the dynamics of diegetic radicalization which would define Bemberg’s subsequent work and would anticipate the redefinition of the social domain of the feminine for post-democracy Argentina.Momentos et Señora de nadie, les premières oeuvres de la réalisatrice argentine María Luisa Bemberg, mettent en évidence l’utilisation d’une idéologie de la maternité au profit d’une structure sociale bourgeoise et d’une dictature militaire. Dans ces films, Bemberg considère l’institution responsable du partage entre répression et rébellion, les protagonistes remettant en question le rôle idéologique traditionnel de la mère et prenant position contre la répression qu’exerce une dictature en déclin. Bien qu’ancrés dans un discours filmique traditionnel, ces films mettent en place les dynamiques de radicalisation diégétique qui définiront les oeuvres ultérieures de Bemberg, et anticipent la redéfinition du concept social du féminin au sein de l’Argentine post-démocratique