This lecture attends to the ethics, dilemmas, and fears of feminist and humanitarian engagement by providing a postcolonial reading of the global battle to alleviate the suffering of the raped women in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. As will be demonstrated, the massive engagement in the plights of Congolese rape survivors in many ways provides a ‘dream specimen’ for the postcolonial critic. It serves as an illuminating example of the re-acting of the white wo/man’s burden to ‘sav[e] brown women from brown men’, with a selecting listening to the voices of the women themselves. However, highlighting the troublesome effects of the engagement in wartime rape is clearly not simple, but paired with several dilemmas. Is the critique is really fair; and in whose interest is it articulated? Is it not quite probable that the rape survivor actually prefers the ethnocentric agent driven by a quest to save her, in comparison with the petulant post-colonial critic, whose nit-picking inquiry might contribute to a renewed silence?

Maria Eriksson Baaz is Senior Researcher/Associate Professor at The Nordic Africa Institute, Uppsala and the School of Global Studies, Gothenburg University

14.05.2013, 16:00-18:00 Uhr, Hörsaal A, Campus der Universität Wien, Hof 2.2, Spitalgasse 2, 1090 Wien.

Vortrag im Rahmen der internationalen Ringvorlesung Feministisch „entwickeln“?! Kritische Perspektiven ׀ Politische Interventionen ׀ Globale Herausforderungen