«The woof and the warp». Conferencia, 2000

Luisa Valenzuela

Ficha técnica: «THE WOOF AND THE WARP». Conferencia, 2000. Feminist Futures. Re-imagining Women, Culture and Development. Kum-Kum Bhavnani, John Foran, Priya A. Kurian, and Debashish Munshi, eds.. Zed Books, 2016.

I´m a fiction writer, perhaps that is why I belief the reappropriation of language gradually exerted by women is opening the way for a different perception of the world. And that total acceptance of woman as a social construction may well counterbalance the implacable progress of present day capitalism, the so-called New World Order.

    The time seems ripe. At least calendar-wise, since the erect unit has finally lost its thousand year old precedence.

Time was phallic in the last millenium.

I like to imagine that a shift of consciousness will take place now that we prioritize duality, now that the date faces us with the two, a much milder and conciliatory digit than the number one, reminder of monotheism, of dogma, of the univocal. The number one left no room for the other. In the two all oppositions fit equally, the yin and the yang, the dark and the light, the union of opposites. According to Chevalier and Gheerbrant´s Dictionary of Symbols, in ancient times the number two was an attribute of the Mother and designated the feminine principle. We can acknowledge this wisdom even today, we can even surmise that in the year 2000 we have crossed a threshold toward a much more open time when woman will be able to complete the development of all the abilities she kept discovering and for which she fought so hard throughout the magnanimous, magical, monstrous twentieth century.

As if this weren't enough, the new millennium put us in touch -logically- with the proliferation of the zero, honoring the circle. We should make the most of this new starting point and bring all aspects of women's language to the forefront.

We might start thinking in virtuous circles, concentric and unending. Like the circles of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires every Thursday. The circle is an expansion from a center, knowledge of self, much as it is said feminine energy moves: in eddies. The protest of the Mothers continues, the circles expand or contract but will never end; every Thursday at three in the afternoon, until the destiny of each victim of the military dictatorship in Argentina is known (1976-1982).

A language made of the loudest silence. Made of courage. And memory.

When history becomescyclical, forgetting can be dangerous. These Argentine women refuse to forget. They look forward but continue going round and round in front of the Presidential Palace, soliciting a complete report as to the whereabouts of each of their desaparecidos and demanding just punishment for the guilty parties.

«There have been many massacres throughout Argentine history, but this is the first time the victims have names and are individualized. We struggle to keep it that way, so that each one without exception will be remembered as they were, with all their joys, ideals and sorrows. For this reason we also need to know how they ended their days. They are not simply one more number in a computer somewhere. They are beings who were very much alive and whose memory will continue to live while we are still living», Laura Bonaparte often explains, speaking as a representative of all the mothers who wear the white kerchief on their heads.

Another language, the white kerchiefs. They are the opposite of the black ink stains with which the men in power attempted to erase the terrifying past. They first began to be used in the Plaza de Mayo out of necessity so that these brave women could recognize each other. And what would every mother have in her wardrobe? A nappy, was the answer.

One can write on the white kerchiefs that the Mothers wear on their heads. And in fact this has happened, because little by little the women began incorporating the names of their disappeared children, embroidered or painted on the white cloth, thus inscribing the terrible history of their country's darkest moments.

Mothers of the Plaza who are proliferating throughout the world, wherever there were or are children or grandchildren lost to repression or dictatorships. Women who propose holding fast to a name. In the tapestry of life- who better than a woman to know it -each knot is unique and irreplaceable. Faced with the death of their loved ones, they have learned to sing louder than ever a song of life, and this song in all its pain and magnificence has crossed all boundaries.

When passing through Buenos Aires, Richard Schechner noted that protest that march in a straight line have authoritarian resonance, while demonstrations that develop in a circular manner are basically antiauthoritarian.

One more recognition of women's forms of expression.

If I only mention the Mothers it is simply because they are the most emblematic. Equally important in my country are the Association of Grandmothers, H.I.J.O.S. or the Families of the Disappeared. They all respond to the same language that these women inaugurated, configured mainly by silence, by the color white, by empty silhouettes. A basically feminine language that has managed to resound stridently throughout the whole world.

Pain and censorship (oh so feminine curses!) have taught women to express themselves using different, unusual forms. The protests, the distress and fury, are no longer made known with blows but with white kerchiefs and circlesthat are reminiscent ofeternity.

Women throughout history have learned to move beyond words so as to express the inexpressible. With completely feminine weapons that are the opposite of weapons but act as such, with everyday elements re-semanticized, turned around like a glove. A soft kid glove transformed into a boxing glove that strikes with the persistent gentleness and precision of a drop of water.

As such, it is important to remember the Chilean arpilleras, those works art naïf the women of Neruda´s Isla Negra first created during the Pinochet dictatorship. The so-called arpilleras or burlaps were collages of embroidery, materials, little rag dolls stitched on the coarse cloth of potato sacks. They narrated, in a form that could be called charming, candid, the dramas that the people of Chile went through during the ill-fated years. Tourists bought them perhaps as one more piece of local folklore, took them home and, with luck, at some moment, their eyes opened and they understood.

A perfect way of telling that which goes beyond words.

Like the white silhouettes the Mothers imposed upon the entire downtown Buenos Aires (what is locally known as el centro) in the final times of the military dictatorship. One morning, suddenly, the city awoke plagued with ghosts. Thirty thousand, to be exact. The 30,000 desaparecidos had their presence stamped on the walls: enormous sheets of butcher paper, white like the white kerchiefs, where the empty silhouettes of men, women and children were imprinted, with their names and dates, so that never again could anyone ignore their ever present absence.

A few years later, a new stroke of genius in the same direction. During the annual demonstration against the coup, there appeared marching alongside the Mothers a countless number of youths with their faces hidden behind completely white, neutral masks, upon which every observer could project the features of a desaparecido or a desaparecida. White masks, inoffensive only in appearance, peaceful, as the opposite of war. There they were, the masks worn by members of the association H.I.J.O.S., bringing back to our memory all those from whom the military had attempted to erase even the trace of their tomb.

These are the closest examples I have at hand to show woman's work from the dark side of language, her lateral and efficient way of expressing that which is suffused, suppressed, banned, painful, dangerous. Women are today historically the most apt to trick the censors, simply because they have acquired full consciousness of censorship, being as they were the favorite victims throughout the centuries.

Woman, the silenced one, has managed to re-appropriate a language that was alien to her, with which she was degraded and rendered invisible.

Woman is mythically the one who can manage to say what cannot be said.

We know that the price to pay is high, we don't forget the sad story of Eve and the famous tree, but now more than ever we are willing to pay it, to run the necessary risks in order to open up new possibilities in a male world that seems to be heading for disaster.

I believe that the hope for a better future is in the hands of women. Or at least in the hands of the feminine, of Shakti, of the social construction called woman. She who won't struggle to occupy the places until now reserved for men. She who questions them thanks to her ability to operate in the margins and crevices. Those who learned to make glorious use of what years ago was called interstitial liberty some day not too far off will make global use of these old abilities. And of many new abilities, why limit ourselves?