BiGS event: Singlehood is a feminist issue! Reflections on singlehood, time and temporal agency
When:
—
Venue:
Birkbeck Clore Management Centre
No booking required
Speaker: Kinneret Lahad, Tel Aviv University
Free event; open to all; book your place.
In the following paper I ask why the discrimination and stigmatization against single women has not been and is not translated to public and political initiatives. Indeed, singlehood is a non-existent political category which is neither identified nor included in the agendas of feminist organizations and is very much underrepresented in critical studies curriculums at both the graduate and undergraduate level. Based on this reality, I can point to some socio-temporal assumptions which explain why singlehood is yet to be politicized and become a target of feminist action. First, the widely held perception of late or lifelong singlehood as a liminal, transitory phase and as a disruption and unnatural social category is very much alive and well in many societies. This line of thinking poses substantial obstacles for envisioning singlehood in political and long-term terms. Second, contemporary mainstream discourse mostly relates to singlehood through personal narratives, single women's life stories and advice columns.
Thus, a complex web of discourses de-contextualizes singlehood from its wider social and cultural settings, leading to the widely held beliefs that attribute blame to single women themselves. Additionally, widespread discourses not only put the blame on single women, it emphasizes that their future will be nothing but a life of misery and loneliness. Paraphrasing Virginia Woolf's well-known dictum: a single woman can perhaps live in 'a room of her own' but not in a 'house of her own.' Simply put, the message single women hear again and again are that they cannot make it on their own. This is why accentuating the social and political dimensions of singlehood are an important step in subverting heteronormative temporal assumptions and collective schedules. I suggest that the re-constitution of singlehood into a social category that one may wish to identify with'"and form a political community with'"can positively yield material and discursive changes both for single and non-single women.
Kinneret Lahad is a senior lecturer at the NCJW Women and Gender Studies Program at Tel Aviv University, Israel. She had been involved in various prestigious research projects, which merited international attention, praise, and materialized in publications in leading journals. Her research interests are interdisciplinary and span the fields of gender studies, sociology and cultural studies. Her latest book A Table for One: A Critical Reading of Singlehood, Gender and Time was recently published by Manchester University Press. Her current projects include independent and collaborative studies on aunthood, friendships, feminism and emotions, feminist age studies, egg freezing and solo dinning.
Contact name:
Magda Schmukalla