Articulación Feminista Marcosur

Campaign
AGAINST FUNDAMENTALISM, PEAPLE ARE FUNDAMENTAL

The campaign AGAINST FUNDAMENTALISMS, PEOPLE ARE FUNDAMENTAL aims to multiply voices expressing firm opposition to discriminatory social practices, discourses and representations, which oppress people or leave them in a state of vulnerability. We believe it is possible to construct both symbolically and politically, a new dimension to the human being and subject, whether embodied as woman or man, through which these practices will become impossible.

Whether religious, political, economic, scientific or cultural, fundamentalism is always political and flourishes in societies which negate the full diversity of the human race and which legitimate the use of violence to subordinate one group to another, or one person to another. Essentially exclusionary and bellicose, fundamentalisms undermine the construction of a project for the human race where all people have the right to have rights, by sacrificing women’s lives, with increasingly refined perversity.

This Campaign promotes democratic and pacific forms of conflict resolution, which allow differences to be recognised and solidarity strengthened, equality pursued and diversity expressed, in the search for negotiated solutions, whether in the public, private or intimate spheres of human coexistence.

IN GOD’S NAME

Religious fundamentalism is present within different doctrines. In the warmongering tradition of the sons of Abraham —Jews, Christians and Moslems—, fundamentalist currents are underpinned by the tribal conviction that each is the chosen people, blessed with the revelation of the one and only true God. These currents control regiments of "sheep", disciplined to resist any change in their ideas, under threat of being punished with pain and suffering.

Jewish fundamentalism seeks to build up the State of Israel to the size proclaimed in the Hebrew Bible. Islamic fundamentalism wants to make the teachings of the Qur’an the only possible way of life, morality, politics and state organisation for Moslems throughout the world.

The Catholic evangelisation sought to justify the colonisation of America and the domination of millions of human beings in their own lands, destroying lives and cultures. It was using arguments based on "divine rights" that the racist ideology dehumanised indigenous and African peoples.

Violence "with the blessing of divine powers" is responsible for the murder of Moslem women in Iran, Algeria, Somalia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Kurdistan and Afghanistan, for the most absurd motives, whether real or imaginary. It is this authoritarian ferment that is responsible for the persistence, even now in the twenty-first century, of the practice of female genital mutilation in different regions of Africa, Asia and the Near East.

In the Americas, the fundamentalist Catholic offensive to control female sexuality appears to follow, even today, the advice of Martelo das Feiticeiras (Malleus Maleficarum), who more than 500 years ago "warned" the inquisitors of the need to keep it strictly under control, otherwise "humanity" would suffer all types of ills. In Latin America and so many other regions of the world, the murder of women by men who claim to act in legitimate defence of their honour is still legal or tolerated. Catholic fundamentalists threaten and frighten women who resort to legal abortions in the United States.

Regardless of the specific objectives pursued by each type of fundamentalism, one thing is certain, there is a point of convergence between all of them: they all wish to dominate, control, and violently subject the bodies, sexualities, subjectivities and lives of women.

They are capable of declaring war or promoting an act of terror of catastrophic dimensions, such as the attack on the World Trade Centre. But no matter where they come from, whether from the White House, the blue mosques, a cathedral or a synagogue, fundamentalists invariably seek to impose their one and only truth, their single voice drowning out all other voices, and to strip women of their human rights, their rights to pleasure, to exercise freely their sexuality, to decide to have an abortion, or to occupy a position of power.

IN THE NAME OF THE MARKET

The Market is a kind of contemporary divinity, which occupies the place of the one and only God and the absolute truth, inherent to all fundamentalisms. In the name of this absolute truth, the men who govern set an example to others by producing non-negotiable conflicts and promoting wars, violence, exclusion, discrimination, individualism and the destruction of nature.

The followers of the Market also pray on a Bible: they worship a current of the capitalist "tradition", as the only true doctrine. The logic of the Market also has its chosen people. These are male, white, originally —but not exclusively— Western and from the North, and formally heterosexual. The Market resorts to sexism, racism and the division of the workforce along ethnic lines. It makes use of discriminatory ideologies, deeply rooted among significant sectors of the planet’s population, to satisfy its voracious appetite for increasing its profits and maintaining its hegemony. The Market also concentrates forces designed to control human sexuality, especially women’s.

The President of the greatest capitalist power in the world, George W. Bush, elected with the support of religious fundamentalist groups, serves the fundamentalism of the Market, just as some mullahs and archbishops serve Moslem or Catholic fundamentalism. One of the big issues in his electoral campaign was the banning of abortion. As soon as he took office, Bush signed the Gag Law, banning government resources assigned to international cooperation from being used to fund reproductive health programmes which deal with the question of abortion, even if it is merely in terms of providing women with information.

RELIGIOUS OR MARKET, THE FUNDAMENTALISM IS THE SAME

It is curious to note that the governments of the USA and Afghanistan are the only ones to date that have not signed the United Nations’ Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, CEDAW. It is also curious that within the UN, when sexual and reproductive rights come up for discussion, George W. Bush’s government starts to make alliances with the Moslem countries and the Vatican.

Market fundamentalism’s capacity for domination has acquired impressive dimensions since it is indissolubly wedded to State powers and global institutions like the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation. But the far-reaching and terrible effects that this type of union produces are already familiar to the human race. The torture and murder of women in the fires of the Holy Inquisition would not have acquired the proportions of a mass slaughter without the lasting alliance between the Catholic Church and the nobility. Nor would the slavery of peoples of African origin and the genocide of the indigenous peoples of the New World have been possible without the steadfast union between the Church and the imperial powers.

A common feature of all fundamentalisms is their intransigence and their imposition of ideas. Like religious fundamentalisms, Market fundamentalism also suppresses the spaces available for the expression of differences, and rejects democratic debate. Society is faced with the choice of either being with it, and sensitive to its inconstant humours, or against it, subjected to its ferocious rage and even murderous tendencies. Intimidated in the face of this rage, many governments have already converted or bowed their heads, in a ritual better known as defeatism.

WHAT’S FUNDAMENTAL ARE PEOPLE

Throughout the history of humanity, the violence unleashed by different expressions of fundamentalism has left open wounds. The remedy of waging new wars has not served to heal these scars, but instead has produced societies that are increasingly terrorised, suffering, hurt and mutilated.

The forces that control the engines of injustice and war, which today are running at full throttle in various parts of the planet, are not new. But we need to take another look at them to see what gear they are in and what is fuelling them.

One of the vital elements for the survival and/or revival of fundamentalisms is the existence of conditions which promote the acceptance of domination. For this reason we need to undo —in our most intimate relationships and in those conducted in the public sphere— the conditioning that makes us accept as natural domination by coercion, which is founded on the most elemental relationship between human beings, that of women’s subjection by men.

It is necessary that we recognise the androcentrism and ethnocentrism present in so many projects and political practices which hold out a promise of supremacy. There must be recognition of the fact that the term "universal", and its political foundations in the equality of rights, was built upon white, male, Western and heterosexual norms, and on a lack of capacity for dialogue, negotiation and inclusion. This means we must question these paradigms and meet the challenge to construct radical alternatives for confronting countless conflicts, including between civilisations and cultures. It requires a process of constant vigilance and self-critique, guided by the ethics of human rights and by the democratic values in building true relations of solidarity.

We must denounce all expressions of fundamentalism, wherever they appear, and purge "the small and undesirable fundamentalist" whom we all have somewhere inside us. Fundamentalisms can only be overcome through a transformation at the individual level, of citizens, of political subjects. This means clearing the field and sowing the seeds of egalitarian, ethical and impartial political and economic relations of solidarity. It means nurturing the belief that a more stimulating and exciting society can flourish, in which sexual, racial, religious, ethnic and all other types of diversity can be truly valued.

More than this, human beings want and need to achieve personal relationships that are truly affectionate and pleasurable, egalitarian and based on respect, care and mutual trust.

It is necessary that the construction of global citizenship be nurtured by the possibility of imagining a future in which all people have a future. In this new millennium, humanity should be capable of constructing collectives spaces in which the whole range of diverse identitites can participate in the construction of an "us" that is inclusive, plural, shifting and not entirely without conflict. This is the fundamental challenge facing an alternative political project.

Another world is possible. But what is more, another, better world is possible.