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A Preponderance of Rosas
by Inana Tuesday, Jul 4 2006, 10:48pm
international / social equality/unity / opinion/analysis

Capitalist exploitation of the Feminine and An appreciation of Rosa Luxemburg

This piece was prompted by an image of the 'Rosa Cherie' published in the Guardian International Newspaper a couple of weeks ago.

It indicated a full colour photograph of the Rosa Cherie, a new hybrid developed for the Birmingham flower show that looked like a vulva. It was juxtaposed with an image of a mitre, indicating the ongoing Episcopalian schism over a female bishopric.

Cherie Blair was photographed veiled and in conversation with Benedict the 16th precisely a week before, to discuss the decline in the European birth Rate. At the time of seeing both these images and the positioning of this woman as some sort of a Rosa Mundi, an example to western women of the stability of the capitalist ethos, in the light of her spouse prosecuting an illegal war against a soverign nation and giving conscience and voice to U.S imperialism, I felt the need to protest.

Rosa Cherie

The Rosa Mundi pattern that adorns the great cathedrals of western civilisation is an intoxicating image. Cherie Blair is a construct and an intimidating one. She signifies an attempt at the hegemony of the Catholic Church to regain lost ground.

In time of war she appears veiled and gloved clasping the hand of Pope Benedict. A stable projection of traditional western supremacy and an image of things not changing.

Three western European countries are rocked by sexual scandal and new laws in these countries continue the work of erosion of citizen rights.

The conservatism of the present pope is underscored in that handshake. In Ireland a raft of legislations has contributed to maintaining a status quo of ' little has changed' but, the organs of church and state have eroded and continously erode the right to free expression, free speech, voting rights and ongoing aggressive planning.

The last Rosa, neither the Rosa Cherie which is a falsified image, doctored and exploited to create a juxtaposition of unchangedness in our value systems, nor the Rosa Mundi which though beautiful, represents to me as a woman, centuries of oppression of the female body -- Rosa Luxemburg.

Not from the perspective of her politics, which I study, but the humainty of her letters and her world view. I have written her words elsewhere this week:

"Our scribblings are usually not lyrics but whirrings, without colour or resonance, like the tone of an engine wheel. I believe that when people write they forget for the most part to dig deeply into themselves and to feel the whole import and truth of what they write.I believe that every time, every day, in every article you must live through the thing again, you must feel your way through it, and then fresh words- coming from the heart and going to the heart- would occur to express the old familiar thing. But you get so used to a truth that you rattle off the deepest and greatest things as if they were the' Our father'.

I firmly intend when I write, never to forget to be enthusiastic about what I write and to commune with myself. All that and an activist too!

Discerning the juxtaposition of image and it's relation to cultural debasement is important. Our governments are steadily eroding our individual rights to expression and freedom through imagery and words and juxtapositions.

Her words: "I am at home wherever in the world there are clouds, birds and human tears"; her humanity and wit are expressions of truth in a world which is strangled by the might of an unstable empire.