M a r c e l a K o ś c i a ń c z u k Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland
PROBLEMS OF THE APPLICATION OF VISUAL
ANTHROPOLOGY IN PALESTINIAN GENDER RESEARCH
ABSTRACT
Th e article presents the main issues connected with visual anthropology application in research studies carried out in non-European environment. Th e text is based on author’s research of the Palestinian society. Th e main topic of the research was connected with the understanding of safety and danger among Palestinian women. Th e article presents prob-lems, challenges, and chances of using photo-interviews according to the postcolonial and intersectional contexts in social research.
Key words:
gender, visual anthropology, Palestine, Palestinian women, society
1. Introduction
One of the most important things in gender-oriented studies, which have been carried out in the Arabic societies, is moving away from the perspective that there is a centre and periphery (the public sphere, which is a patriarchal, men-oriented area, and the periphery, which is the private sphere, principally women’s domain). In spite of the fact that the Palestinian culture is regarded as extremely traditional
and is based on a binary structure, according to Asma Afsaruddin1 that dualistic
perceptions of the Arabic culture may be considered as the implementation of the imaginations of the European people. Gender roles and relationships between men and women in the Arabic culture and religion have been ordered in a completely diff erent way than in the modern European society. Being aware of cultural diff er-ences, we have also needed to point out that the structure of patriarchal violence is present in both cultures, but in diff erent ways. It is important to show respect to diff erent researched cultures. Th e researchers should demonstrate the intersec-tional structure of multidimensional hierarchy of gender values and dependencies in their papers.
Although a researcher should be critical when conducting a research, listening to informers may enable the researcher to appreciate and respect cultural diff er-ences. More importantly, local people are likely to be more open to the contempo-rary dialogical anthropology. Focusing on experience, including body experience, may bring new perspectives and ideas to anthropological work.
In this study, the necessity of researchers to push the limit of traditional re-search approaches has lead me to choose photo-interviews as the rere-search method. Th is method not only enables me to present the Palestinian culture from the point of view of the community, but also to compare data generated through visual rep-resentation with interviews and participating observations.
2. Research description
I have interviewed thirty fi ve women who were self-identifying as Palestinian women2. Th ey were inhabitants of Jerusalem, Beit Sahour, Ramallah, Edna,
Beth-lehem, and several villages close to the Betlehem and Ramallah area. One of the informers was from Nabus and one from Jericho. Interviewing women of various classes, age groups, regions, and religious backgrounds was crucial because of the intersectional character of this study. Inspired by the infl uential work of Claudia Mitchell3, in which she used visual anthropology methods to conduct her studies
all over the world, I have spoken with each woman before and aft er they took
1 A. Afsaruddin, Th e Hermeneutics of Gendered Space and Discourse [in:] Hermeneutics and Honor. Negotiating Female “Public” Space in Islamic/ate Societies. Cambridge–London 1999, p. 8.
2 Th e criterium of Palestinian identity was self identifi cation. It was crucial especially in
Jerusa-lem, where the Palestinian people are considered by the authorities to be “Arabic Citizens of the Is-rael” and not the Palestinian people.
photos. I asked every woman to take four photos and answer to four questions related to topics such as personal pride, their views of the life pride of a man from the woman family, safe and unsafe places for the informer.
My research studies were focused on the Palestinian women’s understanding of safety and danger. Th e responses given by the interviewees during the interviews and photos demonstrate the complexity of this topic. Informers were concerned with political, gender, cultural, and social aspects of safety and danger, according to their religious, political, and class (both local and global) situations. Th e fi rst and second question aim to defi ne crucial values of Palestinian women. Both questions were also designed to explore diff erences between men and women in terms of culture and whether it was possible to distinguish these diff erences.
3. Research results
Findings of this research suggest that the social construction of a binary opposition between men and women has played an important role in the cultural4 structure
of women in the Palestinian society.
While I identifi ed myself as a researcher when I was in the fi eld, the informers oft en considered me as a specifi c tourist and behaved in the same way as they saw any other visitors. One of the informers said:
Come, come, obviously you would like to see how my old house looks like. You don’t have such houses in Europe. You must be interested in old Palestinian hous-es (Interview 3).
On the one hand, that statement may be understood as an expression of pride. Th e woman was proud of her family’s tradition and she took care of the house herself in a very diffi cult political and economic situation5. On the other hand, this
woman perceived that my visit was driven by curiosity and I treated the commu-nity like a tourist attraction. During the meeting, a lot of Palestinian women asked me about Polish culture and compared their own cultural experiences with mine. We talked about children’s education, cooking, family customs, and religion. Th ey were satisfi ed that a person, who from their point of view was from a completely diff erent culture, was interested in their life. During the process, I was becoming a real partner in the dialogue, and not just a spectator, which enabled me to start
4 Cultural structure in my understanding is the structure of values and aims and ways of
achiev-ing these goals.
5 Considering the situation connected with Israeli-Palestinian confl ict. Th e woman is also
conducting photo-interviews; by adopting this strategy, the relationship between the informants and I became more equal, but consequently, I had to answer a lot of personal questions during that introductory part of interview.
Some women withdrew their participation and oft en cancelled the meeting at short notice. It was due to the political consequences resulting from their speech and/or photos. Usually, not only the women themselves, but also their brothers, fathers, husbands, and their employer as well were involved in the decision-making process. European employers supported these women by hiring them; however, the employees were made dependant and relied on the opinions of their employers to make decisions. As a result, the employer-employee relationship has been trans-formed to a colonizer-colonist relationship. One of the Palestinian women told me that her employer took care of her and because of that she had to know everything about the employee’s life. Although she was very interested in participating in my research, I had to contact her employer in advance and ask for permission to in-terview the woman. However, I was informed by her employer that due to the diffi cult situation of the woman, it was impossible for me to interview her. I re-spected that decision in this case; however, that situation has shown that the Pal-estinian women may be at risk of being treated like an object, not only by the pa-triarchal structure of Palestinian culture, but also by their European employers.
Th e phenomenon of the Palestinian women being treated as a dependent vic-tims can be explained in diff erent ways. In the case above, the employer wanted to take care of the potential informer. From diff erent conversations with the Euro-pean employers, I found that there was a pattern in the employer-employee rela-tionship. Employers adopted a parental role and viewed their employees as their children. One of the employers I interviewed told me that the women “behaved like children”, despite the fact that their employees were adults. In this example, caring has made women become dependent.
Next, we should understand the ways in which employers in Palestinian shaped their employees’ decisions as a form of oppression against Palestinian woman. In the example above, the woman apparently accepted her employer’s advice uncriti-cally. According to what the worker told me, she believed that her employer was an expert in the working context and therefore able to protect her better then she could do herself. I understand that it was important to take the infl uence of cul-tural factors over the woman’s understanding of her agency into consideration. As a researcher, I did not want to adopt a parallel role. Rather, I wanted to understand their world through their experiences. I listened carefully to what the informers said and carefully studied the photos taken by them. For me, the narrations and images produced by Palestinian women were the best sources of knowledge about
the complex reality of Palestinian women. Some Palestinian women did not agree to take part in the project, because they were afraid that these interviews will be used against them in a political way. Th ey were especially interested in fi nding out whether my research was funded by an Israeli institution or not. Also, they showed their concern whether my project supported the “politics of normalization” (the political ideology supported by state which eff aces cultural and, especially, na-tional diff erences between the Israeli and the Palestinians to create a homogenous society). According to Fatma Kassem6, the voice of the Palestinian people have
been absent from the discourse of “politics of normalization” in the media and popular science. Instead of Palestinians’s own words, Israeli journalists or writers citied the expressions of Philistines in their writings7.
Th e two descriptions above of the Palestinian people symbolically erased their national identity. Also, they silenced the Palestinian people, which may prevent them from becoming equal conversation partners in the peace process. In Biblical sources (1Sa 17.10-16), a barbaric nation, which was deemed as an enemy of the Israeli people, were described as very dangerous creatures. If we contextualized the expressions of Philistines in this way, we may understand that the ways in which the journalists or writers constructed the Palestinian people as an “enemy” was actually a “historical rhetoric” of the Palestinian people. Nowadays, Palestinian people who live in the state of Israel are no longer considered as the enemy of the Israeli people. Nevertheless, the former are viewed as a non-political group without a national identity. In her doctoral research project, which is about the experi-ences of “the year 1948” or Nakba (a Palestinian term which means “the day of mourning” or “the day of catastrophe”8) among elderly Palestinian women, Fatma
Kassem has shown her struggle with the academic and social aversion towards the term “Palestinian women”. According to most of the Israeli scholars’ point of view, Palestinian women do not even exist. Despite the fact that under the help of her Israeli supervisor, Kassem was fi nally awarded doctoral degree at Hebrew Univer-sity her experiences share some features with Gayatri Spivak’s work9. For Spivak,
deprivation of the right of speech is one of the most common forms of symbolic violence against minorities. If the discriminated group has been made invisible and
6 F. Kassem, Palestinian Women Narrative Histories and Gendered Memory, London–New
York 2011.
7 Ibidem, p.12.
8 Th is year is celebrated by the Israeli people as a year of happiness, because it is a year when the
state of Israel was established.
9 G. Spivak, Can the Subaltern Speak? [in:] Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, C. Nelson,
inaudible, the group has been exterminated. I therefore argued that silencing can be understood as a form of hidden oppression. Both caring and controlling sys-tem10 may work together deprive women of the right to make their own decisions
and/or express their own opinions.
Some of the women, currently living in Jerusalem, have told me about their experiences of being socially invisible, about the political and social attempts to include their experiences into the general experience of all of the Jerusalem’s in-habitants (the Jewish state views the “Arabic citizens” from the perspective of iden-tity policy as the Arabic religious minority and not a national minority11). It is
important for me to underline the internal diff erentiation of the examined group (during the study, my goal was to fi nd women interlocutors that would vary in: age, social status, place of origin, and citizenship status). If we were treating the com-munity that is undergoing this study as a monolith, we would be making a error, that was typical for the older anthropological studies, which considered the re-searcher to be one of the major factors in creating the study’s conditions, as well as the main author of the text describing the explored culture. Of course, this error is mainly related to neocolonialism, which was partially entangled with cultural an-thropology. Th e research approach that I chose draws mainly from the defi nition of culture by Cliff ord Geertz, one of the critics of cultural anthropology. Geertz shows that the thick description (or as a more popular translation claims, “thick-ened description”), which aims at precision in catching the sources of a given com-munity’s behaviours, is a method, which allows a relatively solid reconstruction of the mosaic and network of meaning in a given culture. Geertz took this concept from Gilbert Ryle and used it as a specifi c distinction in a reference to conducting research in culture-based sciences, as well as in the area of physical anthropology and science. Th e man who wrote Th e Interpretation of Cultures points out that his
understanding of culture refers to semiotics, and aims at the possibly most com-plete interpretation of the network of meanings created within the boundaries of a given community. As I found Cliff ord Geertz’s method of cultural interpretation12
academically close, I was trying to bring it to life in several ways. Not only did I try to contact women that diff ered in: age, social status, fi nancial or family situation, but I also took the eff ort to observe their lives as precise as possible. I also tried to use as many communication channels with the examined women as possible, as
10 It is rather diffi cult to divide these two systems.
11 Th is is a singular qualifi cation, which does not represent the religious, cultural, and social
diversity of the above mentioned group.
well as many ways to reach out to them. In many cases, the conversation, as well as the photographical project, could not take place for various reasons, among which the most frequent were the concerns of the women and of their surroundings. However, in many cases the four questions and the request for four pictures were just the start for long conversations that I had with the respondents. We cooked and cleaned together, I benefi ted from their hospitality, getting to know the realities of their everyday life “the hard way”. Th is is crucial as the women that I have met made it very clear, and it was actually them that turned my research from a purely intellectual study into something more of an experience (including the physical experience of the body) that became the key aspect of my work. Because of that, and in those circumstances that surprised me, the interests of the studied group and the research objectives of the anthropological culture aft er the breakthroughs (appreciating the personal experience, a perspective previously omitted, the con-text of the fl esh, smell and taste, that of cooperation and not domination) became coincidental and close to each other. When I, as a researcher, tried to remain ap-propriately distant and, more importantly, listen to the voice of the studied women, trying to see the world through their eyes, my interlocutors had no problem inter-preting my world (including my personal world) using their categories. Th at gave rise to many matrimonial off ers, attempts to talk me into staying in Palestine, and personal questions. Th e people that underwent the study answered the research questions referring to my contact with them, or, in some cases, asked me the same questions that I just asked them. Th e later situation gained a specifi c meaning when I, as a researcher, became a person that was interviewed by the people that I was supposed to study. A peculiar change of places occurred alongside a division of infl uences. In some way, those people that were undergoing the study and were the so-called “bad actors”13 seized control in their communities and became in some
way stronger than the person from the European culture, than the researcher, that could be asked their own questions and, therefore, using a ricochet gesture, gain a specifi c tactical advantage14 over the representative of an another culture. Despite 13 I am using the term “bad actors” in reference to those women, who took the underprivileged
position in the community. Th ey have no privileges and, as they themselves observed (supplying their observations with examples), their situation in the community is low. It does not, however, mean that the examined women agreed which such a diagnosis and confi rm it when referring to themselves. In some regions, the dependence between the auto-interpretation of the studied women and their social reception was inversely proportional (especially in the Bethlehem and Beit Sahour regions).
14 I am referring here to defi nition of tactics used by Michael de Certeau (M. de Certeau, Th e Practice of Everyday Life, Berkeley–Los Angeles–London 1984), who pointed out that in contradiction
to strategy typical for system thinking, which characterizes leaders and those who are better fi nan-cially situated, the individuals, who are being oppressed, use diff erent mechanism for showing their resistance. Th ey use tactics, which create possibilities for using silent, guerrilla-like actions, which are
the fact that I should have predicted such a possibility (that the individuals being questioned might ask me the same questions that I ask them), at fi rst it made me feel uncertain and discomfi ted. In that moment, when I became the person being examined, I understood the size of the challenge that my interlocutors were facing. At the same time, this moment was the time when I had to give up the scientifi c distance and replace it with personal refl ection that was expected from me by the Palestinian women. I was confronted with my family, life, and work history, which made me understand the real problems of the women that I have been studying and the issues I have been researching. Th ere were times that the individuals being studied treated the answers and the photo shots, as a specifi c form of therapy, de-spite the fact that I in no way intended for this to happen. However, it turned out that some of the women, whom I studied, felt greater ease when talking about their problems just because I was a complete stranger for them, in no way connected to their relationship network. One of the women tried to use me to help her adopt a Polish baby.
Other women showed their concerns and refused to take part in the study for the very same reasons. I managed to observe that the women, who felt excluded from their community or lacked the feeling of support from the male representa-tives from their community, were more eager to share their experiences with me. However, some of the women felt obliged to consult their participation in my study with men, and among those women, there was the highest number of refusals to take part in the study, as well the highest number of casual answers. Men oft en warned women about the possibility of my studies being politically-oriented and of the possibility of their opinions being used against them. Th e fact that women decided not to take part in the study because of their husbands, fathers, and broth-ers points out to a cultural network of dependencies, in which women do not ex-press their opinions, but are dependent on the opinions of the men from their community instead. Women were also treated as ones that are easy to use if one would choose to destroy a political or a national notion, which (according to men) is in their domain.
a “silent acts of revolting and resistance” aimed against the system actions. Michel de Certeau point-ed to the phenomenon of “la perruque” spread among factory workers, which during their working hours used small pieces of material for developing their creative powers. In the case that I am describ-ing, the women that were studied were using the time devoted to the interview to gain some informa-tion about me as a researcher and off er me their way of life, what was a demonstrainforma-tion of their creative powers, as well as an indication that they are not willing to relate to the dominant position of the researcher towards the person being researched.
4. Additional circumstances
My own gender qualifi cation made it possible for me to fi nish my project. If I was a man it would be impossible for me to talk with women in such an open way, spend so much time with them, and share so many experiences. Women are very open to meeting other women, they want to have them as guests, and are very open to speaking with them; however, an idea of meeting a man, talking to him, and having him as a guest is potentially dangerous. One of the women asked me to help her fi nd foreigners that would be interested in renting a room in her home. Despite the fact that she was in a very bad fi nancial situation and was desperate to fi nd an another source of income, she made it very clear that she would not rent a room to a man. Because of the social and religious interpretations of contacts between a man and a woman, establishing any relation between the two genders repre-sentatives (apart from family relations) is treated as dangerous and indecent. Th is is changing due to a very high appreciation of education, as well as the strive to provide young people with education. Co-educational universities are changing the view that many Palestinian clans have on principle hierarchy and family struc-ture. For educational facilities do not only have intellectual functions, since they oft en replace the institution of matchmakers or arranged weddings. However, the relationships between family members (i.e. between cousins) are held in the high-est high-esteem.
5. Understanding the visualization
Every work using visual anthropology is at the same time an interpretation of this relatively young branch of science. Th is is also such a case. Using the photo-inter-view, presenting the studied individuals with a simple camera, and asking them to take some pictures encountered resistance among the studied community, and forced me to modify my original plan. In contrast to those researchers, who pre-sented the studied individuals with a disposable cameras asking them to take pic-tures, the method that I used most frequently was to lend the interviewees my camera and ask them to take pictures with me being present there. Th at choice resulted in an immense sense of fear among the studied women caused by the thought of having to take the pictures by themselves, a possibility of understanding the presence of such equipment in their families (especially among men) incor-rectly, a fear of not knowing how to take photos, or a general reluctance to photog-raphy. Women were very much interested in the study and eager to answer
ques-tions; however, taking photos encountered a huge resistance among them. As a result, some of the vast interviews became even more intensive, as women would talk about the places and objects that they would like to photograph, but refused to actually take any pictures from various reasons. Answers given by some women before the photo shot diff ered from the ones that they gave aft er the photo-inter-view. Th is proved that for women from the diverse Palestinian community the word code is coincidental with the visual code. Th e concern and the feeling of danger accompanying those women on daily basis were also present during our contact, and my request for taking pictures at fi rst only increased those feelings. Women that I studied had a completely diff erent view on presenting their estates than the children studied in a similar way by Marisol Clark-Ibáñez15. She used
photo-interview to present the world of Spanish speaking children of emigrants in the USA. In her study students were happy to present the belongings of their family on photographs (a washing machine, a refrigerator or a television set) in order to save them from oblivion, when those objects will be taken away from them (as a result of thievery or repossesion). Th e fact that children reacted in such way might be connected with them being spontaneous and their belief representing almost magical power.
6. Visual oppression
Women that I came across mainly experienced oppression from the camera, video camera, and other various fi lm recording devices. Th e nature of those oppressions had several levels. Women told me about being monitored by the Israeli forces during their journeys within the boundaries of their own country, or during their trips abroad (there are video cameras in the control points), being photographed could also result in them being victimized by their neighbors and friends, and, in extreme cases, endangering their whole family to lose their honour. Photographs are also used as evidence against women in divorce cases or those connected with family jurisdiction. Knowing all this from the start, I decided to give up on one of the technical methods of photo interview, meaning photographing places sug-gested by the women being interviewed. Admittedly, some of the women, despite my explanations in English and Arabic, were convinced that I am going to be the
15 M. Clark-Ibáñez, Kadrowanie świata społecznego przy użyciu wywiadu fotografi cznego [in:] Badania wizualne w działaniu. Antologia tekstów, M. Frąckowiak, K. Olechnicki (eds.), Warsaw 2011,
one taking photographs and their role will be reduced to being a passive object. During the interview, the women were very active, they were showing initiative, some of them started asking the same questions that I asked them to the other women in order to help me with the survey; however, when I asked for the photos there was only deaf silence, and the women were expecting a specifi c act of ap-propriation of their space by me taking photos. Meeting and examining women, and asking them to take photos, was a challenge for me not only one the meth-odological, but also on the ethical level. I can imagine that almost any researcher deciding to use visual methodology in the non-Western cultures has to meet sim-ilar dilemmas. Th is problem is described by Faye Ginsburg, who considers wheth-er it is possible to say that photographs, movies or any othwheth-er visual arts created by people of non-Western cultural origins can remain independent, and whether they can describe the world of the given cultural community16. While describing this
problem Ginsburg referred to native Australian’s communities. Th e researcher presents the statements of some activists who claimed that the this community should have its own television channel, which would allow them to emancipate, and also would be a enable the community to show their life from their own per-spective17. Th e scepticism towards those conceptions is of course caused by doubts
if using tools typical for the Western culture (especially for the mass culture) will be appropriate for presenting problems and positions of native (non-Western) communities. Ginsburg described media, whose projects were oriented for pre-senting the interests of minority groups. Having read his text, along with my fi eld experience, allows me to see that matter in a much wider perspective. Th e above mentioned aversion for visuals among the examined women does not mean that there is no media in their communities. On the contrary. Th eir relation towards visual media has to be considered on several levels. When viewed through the above mentioned dependencies of postcolonial sensitivity, I can state that oft en paradoxical presence of television sets, computers, cellular phones (whit built-in cameras) in households that lacked other European devices (such as showers or toilets) proves the infl uence of consumerism on the examined community. Th is is a descriptive, and not a critical statement, a mere remark on the fact that has vari-ous causes and refers to dependence networks, in which the male and female mem-bers choose to join out of necessity or need. It turns out that for social status
vali-16 F. Ginsburg, Mediating culture. Indigenous Media, Ethnographic Film and the Production of Identity [in:] Fields of Vision, Essays in Film Studies, Visual Anthropology and Ethnography,
L. De-vereaux, R. Hillman (eds.), California 1995, p. 256.
17 Th e opinion that is presented here is stated by the Central Australian Aboriginal Media
dation of a family, or in order to feel comfortable (but also safe18) the
above-mentioned media are more important than sanitary devices. As a matter of fact, in some ways they are also less expensive as they can be bought in instalments or during various sales. Investing in sanitary devices also lacks reason as there are oft en water and electricity shortages in some regions of Palestine.
7. Specific gender issues
Despite the fact that almost all of the houses that I visited had the above mentioned devises, using them was oft en the children’s and men’s domain. Women watched television programs for entertainment, rarely, if at all, using the Internet or cam-eras and video camcam-eras (that is especially true for the elderly and middle aged women from the rural areas among, young women were active Internet users). During the study I noticed that some of the women used mediation of other peo-ple to send me an e-mail message despite the fact that they read my announcement on the Internet. Th e lack of a stable Internet connection, electrical power short-ages in their households, and various technical and economic factors resulted in such actions. During workshops that I organized in one of the refugee camps, the men that were in charge of issuing the equipment, were convinced that I am going to teach women how to take pictures and therefore they assumed from the start that the workshop was connected with technology education. It was a result of the common understanding in that culture that technological equipment is dealt with by men, and, at the same time, their doubt if women are capable of taking photo-graphs. For many women it was in fact an unusual situation, that it was them, who were asked to take pictures. Livia Alexander, who was dealing with problems of producing visual records (movies) by the Palestinians and with the Palestinian, claims that in the documentaries fi lmed by the members of local communities, as well as the ones co-produced with foreign help, women problems are almost ab-sent. Women are portrayed as members of the crowd, their individual features are not prominent, they are presented as members supporting the resistance system. Th e author refers to the movie State of Danger, the intention of which was to por-tray in an equal way the Palestinian and the Israeli women and their role in
estab-18 Goods that are a representation of the family’s material status, are in some way a symbol of
their strength, and also oft en a chance to escape the everyday problems connected with very hard living conditions, constant insecurity, fear and so on. Internet is also a tool for communication with all the family members, who are scattered for political and economic reasons.
lishing peace in the Near East19. In reality, the Palestinian women are portrayed in
a completely diff erent way than the women from Israel. From the authors perspec-tive, as well as from that of the Struggle for Peace, the problem is presented from the Israeli side. Despite the fact that both sides of the confl ict had the same amount of time to present their opinions, the Palestinian women’s portrait is not individu-alized. In my opinion, it may be a result of a completely diff erent portraying condi-tions in the modern Palestinian and Israeli society. However, the interpretation of those images from the perspective of an Western viewer is that of a passive Pales-tinian woman and an active Israeli woman, which undoubtedly introduces a lot of adulteration when it comes to the real situation of women, who can be very active, but because of the cultural background should not be presented directly.
In fact, as it turned out during the course of conversations and observations, the women were not treated by the representatives of their culture as someone capable of creating visual messages. Unlike in the European culture, where the body of a woman was presented in visual arts, women who are respected in a com-munity should not be a subject of imaging. It does not, however, mean that wom-en are not at all preswom-ent in the Palestinian culture. On the contrary. To my surprise one of the local magazines had in it pictures of women who were so much diff erent from those who I have met on the streets. I asked one of the men about it and he replied that those magazines are bought by men, and men want to look at attractive women, as they cannot see them on the street. Th e women, who were presented in the media were not Palestinians (in most cases), they were European women or women from Egypt or Turkey. If Palestinian women were presented their images were blurry, they were also covered with cloth and were wearing long dresses. Palestinian women (and their bodies) are neither a subject, nor an object in the studied culture, they are treated as passive recipients of the images created by men. Men and (paradoxically) children (also male) were the ones controlling the media content that was presented to women, who were watching television programs and
19 Th e idea itself, although very ethical, provokes a deep level objection, as well as my objection.
Th e political in it’s essence thought, that women can establish peace has it’s sources in thinking that they are by nature pacifi stic and conciliatory. Such an approach provokes objection, among others because of its essential and general character. However, it would be possible to accept that if such an opinion was drawn from conversations with women, their personal opinions, and auto-identifi cation. In reality, such an opinion is held against women, who are set against male individuals from their communities. Because of that, a particular game is played in order to win women’s views and actions, which are being included in a kind of political game, with the peace at stake. Objecting to such a practice was also one of the main reasons that I decided to resign the work in which I was suppose to compare the problems of the Palestinian and the Israeli women. L. Alexander, Palestinian in Film, “Visual anthropology” 1998, No. 10, p. 325.
pictures more oft en than men. Women, who were using the Internet and used it to communicate with me, were in most cases leaders of their community, as well as the people who had most contacts with the Western world (which maybe was one of the reasons that they were more eager to take part in the study). Women, who were not used to attempts associating them with media activity, did their best to change my questions and requests in order to make them more suitable for their expectations and superstitions connected to the study. In many cases however, the initial aversion changed to a very active cooperation.
8. Fear and empowerment
I decided not to use a more advanced tools that would allow to record not only the visual content, but the sound as well. I did not use a video camera mainly because I was afraid that such a device would result in an even bigger fear among the ex-amined. (Th is fear was connected to the video camera as a tool with an even bigger negative connotations than a camera, as the women associated it with investiga-tions, or an attempt to steal their image that would be later used in television, or a movie. On the other hand, this fear would also be connected with destroying a much more complicated and expensive equipment than a simple camera). It may seem that using a video camera instead of pictures would make the examination more performative. And yet, it seems to me that a running video camera would only make the women more intimidated, as it was the case with recorders. Women that I have met were suspicious towards technologically advanced tools and ap-proved picture taking only aft er longer conversations, during which not only did I get to know them better, but at the same time I was gaining their trust. Using the camera did not stop the women from initiating performative actions, which changed (at least for the time of taking the picture) the existing social structures. Women came out of their homes in order to take a picture of them from the out-side (symbolically crossing the closed space and moving into the open space, which also carried a need for a change of clothes). Some of the examined women de-cided to present attitudes and values present in the Palestinian community using their family members. Th is time the woman was the one directing the moves of their family and choosing their poses. Women became the directors of the situa-tions that would later become cemented using the camera.
Camera seemed like a better tool than a video camera, since it enabled women to study the frame, which in most cases took place in a real space of photographic studio, created from the houses of examined Palestinian women. In most cases
women took several minutes just to prepare the place that was going to be photo-graphed, cleaning it from all of the unwanted objects. If I choose to use a movie such amount of concentration on the detail would not be possible. Th e photo-in-terview technique also allowed me to gradually connect words with pictures, what was very important for the examined community.
In case of a video camera, words could also accompany the pictures, but at the same time it would not respect the women’s endeavours, for whom a personal conversation connected with a meal was the key moment of the study. Th e conver-sation preceding the photo shot was also important in order to convince the wom-en, that the culture of the story is also “their space”. As Fatma Kassem writes20,
women are not speaking when a man is present, but when they are left alone with other women, mainly in the kitchen, they are starting to tell their own stories, which they share only with other women.
Th anks to the fact that women were taking pictures aft er talking to me in a way that oft en resembled “kitchen stories”, being surrounded by other women those pictures became later illustrations to those stories. However, some of those women did not include pictures to their stories, and their gestures and the way in which they took pictures revealed that they treated my request as an act of violence and saw no sense in photographing their world. Th ose pictures had very few elements in them, and the elements portrayed in them had very little meaning to the exam-ined. I also noticed that they were trying to photograph places as far from their own experiences as possible. Taking into account that one of the women shared her fear that those photographs might contribute to the her or her family members death or tortures, I can assume that the fear of inappropriate usage of visual mate-rial was a major factor determining many of the women’s actions during the study. For me, as a researcher, it was very important to join words and photographs, in accordance with the views of Kristen Hastrup and Gemma Orobitg Canal21. I am
also sure that picture is unable to replace words; however, it plays a diff erent role. As the above mentioned author writes, photography inspires further stories; more-over, it delivers a diff erent kind of knowledge about the reality. Th e visual data oft en enriches and completes the oral record, in some cases reveling things that the interviewed individuals omit in their statements. When it comes to intersection
20 F. Kassem, op.cit., p. 25–26.
21 K. Hastrup, Anthropological Visions: Some Notes on Visual and Textual Authority [in:] Film as Etnography, P. Crawford, D. Turton (eds.), Manchester 1992; G. Orobitg-Canal, Photography in the Field [in:] Working Images. Visual Research in Ethnography, S. Pink, L. Kürti, A. Afonso (eds.),
studies, this kind of material gives additional knowledge source about the econom-ics, family, and social status of the examined group.
9. The process
My studies, unlike in those that presented the examined individuals with profes-sional photographs taken by the researcher, women were not that much interested with the fi nal eff ect, the picture. Th ey were instead asking me aft er taking it if it was good, as if they were seeking approval for their choice. However, they were not surprised with the fi nal eff ect22, what was important for them was working on the
set that was to become immortalized in their pictures. When it comes to the pho-tographic material gained from the examined women, what is important is not just the photograph itself, but the fact of taking the picture. Selecting the frame, arrang-ing it, takarrang-ing the photograph, and then talkarrang-ing about it were the moments that made women gain consciousness of the importance of their experience. Observing: moves, gestures, actions, and facial expressions of the women before taking pho-tographs and during that process indicated a great change in the dynamics and tone of the voice of the examined individuals. In that sense, the picture became important as an inspiration to a specifi c kind of actions, activity of body, and not only of the mind; it was an inspiration for oral verbalization, as well as doing some kind of transgression against being passive (including, or maybe even most impor-tantly material passivity), which is oft en expected from Palestinian women. Choos-ing this method had an eff ect of changChoos-ing the perspective, durChoos-ing which women were strengthening themselves, something Margaret Hall calls empowerment. Th is term, according to the above-mentioned author, is connected with the change that might take place in a life of a single woman, as well as in communities of women, and is the result of increasing consciousness of one’s actions23. Th e activity of the
examined women began to be aimed not only at the family members, but towards the researcher as well (or in this case a woman researcher). One of the photographs is showing how I became an element of a photograph arranged by one of the ex-amined women. When we were examining the photograph, we realized in what way the personal experience of that woman was turned around.
22 Th ere were however exceptions and they concerned with taking photographs of people, who
were not silent, non moving actors, but because they turned in the wrong moment, the photograph gained a completely diff erent character, than intended by the examined women. Unfortunately, they decided to repeat the process.
In the picture we can see the window to the house of the examined woman’s aunt, who brought her up aft er she was abandoned by her family when she was just a baby. Th e thing that is most important in this picture is not the window itself, but the bars that are in it, and which make her feel like she was living in a high secu-rity prison for few years, which played a great part in her life experiences. She decided to take the photograph from the outside of the house. She was below the window level, hence we have a frog’s perspective. Th e Author was not aware of the eff ects that she could get using this way of presenting an object (which seems big-ger than it is in reality), she was however satisfi ed with the eff ect that she got, that is even more visible thanks to the close up, the window bars are almost the only thing in the frame. Probably the only element of the picture that got in it uninten-tionally is the grean leaf of the garden plant, that in some way corresponded with the fact, that this time, the formerly imprisoned woman is now free, and taking photographs symbolises the time when she was locked away. Th e informer de-cided to take one more photograph of the same object in a much higher close up in order to make the bars even more visible, and present the faces of the “impris-oned”. Th is time, while she was taking the photograph, she concentrated on catch-ing on the camera the faces of those locked up, makcatch-ing them even more vivid, what represented them being stripped from their privacy, the bars (very symbolically) covered my mouth in a way presenting the researcher in the photo as someone gagged. Th is photograph is the strongest way to present the change of roles. It is
the researcher who became the sub-altern. I do not take this as an act of violence or abuse, but more of an attempt of the examined person to use the presented methods and techniques to shape the communication situation, in a way that will allow the researcher to experience the position of the examined individual in the fullest way possible.
Francesco Lapenta proves that using photographs in an interview with inform-ers allows a polisemic presentation of one’s own story, by creating a new commu-nication situation24. Changing roles, as well as using the bars motif and two human
fi gures actually became a canvas, which has created at least several meaningful references.
While taking the fi rst photo, the woman asked me to arrange it in a way that would make her youngest son, who was being passive at that time, a prisoner. She showed me, that I should almost lie him down on the bars. It was impossible with-out placing him in the frame. Paradoxically I also, in a symbolical way, became an inmate. Actually it took me some time to realize that, but since the woman who was being interviewed and me shared the same age, when the interview ended, it was
24 F. Lapenta, Some Th eoretical and Methodological Views on Photo-Elicitation [in:] Th e Sagebook Handbooks of Visual Research Methods, E. Margolis, L. Pauwels (eds.), Los Angeles–London–New
hard for me not to think about the past seven years of my life that the examined woman spent in prison. Aft er taking and examining the photo she said with joy, that she managed to “imprison me in the picture”. Maybe such an act was a specifi c at-tempt to include me in the problems of the Palestinian women. Th e examined women, while taking the picture, played a role of a person visiting a prisoner, but being unable to contact him, standing in front of his window. Th e infant is in the foreground tightly holding on to the bars. Paradoxically that calm child is rebelling against accepting this situation, and refuses to being treated as a prisoner, it has its head turned from the camera. My silhouette is in the background, during the pho-to take I was trying pho-to get out of the frame, which resulted in me looking right inpho-to the camera… in a way co-experiencing being imprisoned as the women that I ex-amined asked me to. It was not the only situation in which the people that I inter-viewed wanted me to understand that being with them and sharing their experi-ences is the right way to study how the life of a Palestinian woman looks like.
Th e author of the above mentioned pictures did not stop at taking four photo-graphs connected with the questions asked. She was very eager to share stories from her life. With great enthusiasm and being full of energy, she started photo-graphing nearby objects and places, which she perceived as dangerous and safe, as well as objects that fi led her with pride. Unlike many other women, this individu-al had no problems in taking the camera to her hands; what is more, she individu-almost started running from one room to another, taking photographs, which were a sto-ry, that was an answer to the questions asked. She was accompanied by her two sons. One of them was very lively and kept on interrupting the interview, and the other, just a few months old, was lying in the next room for the most of the inter-view. Th e woman told me that for her prison is a dangerous place, and that she wants to symbolize that with the view of the window behind bars. Paradoxically, the bars that are keeping here safe from unwanted visitors, became a symbol for considering herself a dangerous person. At the same time they corresponded with an another part of her statement, when she pointed to her current feeling of dis-comfort and danger caused by the fact that she is living in a refugee camp, where her husband comes from. Installing bars in their windows symbolizes the inhabit-ants opinion, that the outside environment is dangerous and they have to protect themselves from it. Admittedly, the bars were not from the house that the examined person was currently living in, but from the fragments of her statement concerning the place she lived in confi rmed that it was not a place in which the informer felt good. Here are some fragments of her statement:
I am not an immigrant and I tell him [her husband] that it is pointless, but I do not want to live in this camp. I cannot talk to him, but I believe that I will achieve
my goal, and we will not be living there in a few years. It is a very delicate matter, when we are talking about it, it always ends up in a fi ght. I am from Bet Sachur, when you come from a place, where you have your own piece of land, a home of your own, you do not want to be in a such an unsafe place as a refuge camp, where one day you have something, and on the other day you do not. I do not want to live in such uncertainty. Besides it is very gray in the camp, it is terribly noisy there, and there is a crime environment, it is not a good place our sons. (Interview 5)
Th e form in which she spoke proves that she is a person with a strong person-ality, who strives to realize her goals, which are important not only from her point of view, but from the point of view of the whole family (especially the children). Fears that this woman had were connected with the future of her children. Remem-bering her own life experiences, she was afraid that her sons might suff er from similar traumatic experiences resulting from occupation. Th e above mentioned statement proves that there was a specifi c confl ict, not only between her and her husband, but it is a delicate matter for herself. We can see here a clash of two values: patriotism and personal and family well-being. Th e reason that this woman found herself in prison was that she decided for a suicide attack in the centre of Tel Aviv. It all took place during the second Intifada. Despite the fact that my informer gave up on her attack at the last moment (exposing herself to danger from the people from the organization that she worked for) she was uncovered by the organization members and handed over to the Israeli authorities. She stated that she decided for the attack as she was in despair and frustrated because of the contemporary po-litical, social, and economical situation (food, water, and electricity shortages, re-maining under house arrest for days, living in a state of permanent threat). Th e reason why she did not carry out the attack was that she saw an Israeli child smil-ing in a baby carriage. Th at moment, when she looked into the eyes of a baby from another culture, made her change her life plans, saved her life (it was supposed to be a suicide mission), made her go to prison, but at the same time it changed the way she perceived the Israeli civilians. As she stated, it was in that moment that she understood that ordinary citizens (from both sides) should not pay the costs of military operations. In a way, that one look was an impulse for changing her view-point, choosing an another group of identifi cation (that is mine, and what belongs to someone else – the hostile and native community).
I intentionally used the English term “stare” (and the relating term “glaze”) in this interpretation, a word that is not popular in the Polish scientifi c discourse (the examined did not use exactly that word), but which is present in the movie theory, gender studies, as well as in the post-colonial studies. I am aware that in the Polish translation the connotations diff er and that is why I will try interpret them
refer-ring to the perspective of power which accompanies those terms in the English language. Th en I will show the possibility of inversing those terms when, used by people, who are not stereotypically connected with such a “strong and dominant” look. Th eoreticians of gender and postcolonial studies referred to the concept of looking in the political perspective taking that concept from psychoanalysis25.
Staring is not a normal look, but as Rosmarie Garland-Th omson puts it, it is con-nected with fascination, which can be either positive or negative, as we oft en stare into objects that trigger such emotions as disgust, embarrassment, not meeting the expectations of social norms26. As the author points out, staring is very
demo-cratic, it concerns all social classes. Nonetheless, norms concerning a specifi c kind of look are set by people having power. Th at is why looking became an interesting topic for researchers interested in the subject of exclusion, racial problems, and matters concerning the minorities. John Berger in his book Ways of Seeing”27
sented how the woman’s image is created in the man’s eye. Women that were pre-sented at the beginning of the century lacked any power (at least offi cially) to de-termine their cultural images; according to Berger, the male centric look was imposed on them. Despite the fact that this researcher was criticized many times for his essential views on defi ning the essence of masculinity and femininity, his voice became an important one in the theory of appropriating patriarchal look. Bell Hooks, on the other hand, proved that women also can be hegemonic leaders if they fi nd themselves in a privileged situation in terms of race or class28. Hooks
shows a way, in which white women and men looked at their black servants, who could not look at their look at the faces of their owners in the same way. Th e re-searcher sees the power of the look as a tool of racial violence, which cannot be turned around in a revolutionary act of breaking with the object-subject duality, in which white people are subjects, and black people are objects. Of course, this is not just a matter of reversing the mechanisms, but rather about changing the pat-terns and mechanisms. Th e imperial power of a male, or a central look, which shaped the offi cial29 ways in which minorities where perceived by themselves as 25 E. Kaplan, Looking for the other. Feminism, Film and the Imperial Gaze, New
York–Lon-don 1997, p. xi. Th e main source here is the Lacanian psychoanalysis.
26 R. Garland-Th omson, Staring, Oxford 2009, pp. 3–4. 27 J. Berger et al., Ways of Seeing, London 2008.
28 B. Hooks (or bell hooks how the author described herself) Black Looks. Race and Representa-tion, London 1992.
29 I consistently use the term “offi cial look”. I am aware that the diagnosis about the complete
infl uence of the portraying minority groups on their actions do not consider the so called second and third information circuit, passed beyond the offi cial trends. In other words, despite the consider-able infl uence of the determinations of offi cial representations centrally shaping the image of
wom-well by the others, has been seen as a problem by researchers for the past thirty years. Despite the eff orts to reconstruct the mechanisms of oppression such re-searchers as Bell Hooks, Ann Kaplan, and Kobena Mercer, try to reconstruct the usage of the look of the minority communities. Th at kind of actions result in a new perspective on the centre, which is beginning to deny itself, as it is no longer the only one. Th e social and political strength resulting from defi ning the mechanisms of staring, gazing, and describing is of course still connected with mechanisms of repression, which can be found not in one, but in many sources. Nonetheless, the look gains emancipatory characteristics. Th at is how I understand the already men-tioned statement of a woman, who changed her life views aft er staring into a baby carriage (to a better one, from her current point of view). Rosemarie Garland-Th omson points out that staring connected with an huge dose of emotions and fascination in a given object, in which we can see features that we never saw before, causes a break of the status quo, becomes a challenge allowing a change30. It seems
that that is what happened in this case. Th e breakthrough caused by the look was connected with the multiplied transgression beyond a state that could be called the status quo. Th e decision to take part in a terrorist attack, as well as giving it up, were acts of breaking the norm, which political, social, and personal results were in both cases immense. Giving up the attack did not mean going back to being passive, on the contrary, it required a struggle and it met with rejection from some people, that at that time were associated with the informer illegally staying on hostile country’s territory. Th e power of the look that resulted in such changes must have been extreme.
Being aware of the power that the look has was one of the reasons that made me decide to choose the photointerview as my examining method, as I wanted to know the images that can infl uence the feeling of security and insecurity among the Palestinian women.
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