South Asia Citizens Web

This edited extract from Shulamith Firestone’s classic The Dialectic of Sex explores how approaches to mental health are always structured by relations of power. Firestone argues that feminism’s absorption into institutionalised neo-Freudian cod-psychology deflected its initial assault on patriarchy—and that only political organization and struggle is capable of breaking through women’s oppression.

Dhaka, Bangladesh - Officers from the army’s intelligence agency have instructed major companies to stop advertising in Bangladesh’s two leading independent newspapers, sources told Al Jazeera.

Last week, a workshop titled ‘Jinns and Black Magic’ was organised in Islamabad by the department of humanities at the COMSATS Institute of Technology (CIIT), one of Pakistan’s largest universities. The invited speaker, Raja Zia-ul-Haq, introduced as a ‘spiritual cardiologist’ is reputedly an expert on demonic possessions and evil spirits. He is popular: a press photograph shows no standing room left in the university’s main auditorium.

This is an important book. The idea that every generation rewrites history is certainly true in the case of the 1947 Partition of British India into India and Pakistan. Indeed, one might say that the Partition has been rewritten every decade or so.

The problem of the deep collapse of the justice institutions in Sri Lanka, would need to be addressed if a credible outcome is to emerge, from implementation of this Resolution. Mere arrival of experts alone would not suffice.