1st Edition
The Gendered Body in South Asia Negotiation, Resistance, Struggle
This book situates the discourse on the gendered body within the rapidly transitioning South Asian socio-economic and cultural landscape. It critically analyzes gender politics from different disciplinary perspectives including psychoanalysis, post-structuralism, post-colonialism and law among others.
Enriched by contributions from well-known South Asian feminist scholars, this book discusses themes such as democracy and dissent, citizenship and violence and how the female body has historically been used in these discussions as a shield and a weapon. It also focuses on technology and misogyny, the politics of veiling and unveiling, the body of the Muslim women in contemporary India as well as bodies which are marginalized or labelled transgressive or monstrous. The chapters in the volume showcase the complexities, convergences and divergences which exist in the conception and understanding of the gendered body, sexuality and gender roles in different socio-cultural spaces in South Asia and how women negotiate these boundaries.
Topical and comprehensive, this book will be useful for scholars and researchers of gender studies, sociology, political sociology, social anthropology, cultural studies, post-colonial studies and South Asian studies.
Part I: NEGOTIATION- 1 Wearing Multiple Bodies: Towards a Psychosocial Analysis of Women's Bodies in Globalized India- Rachana Johri 2 Mothering the Daugther's Body: Narratives from Two Muslim Mothers in India-Syeda Naghma Abidi 3 Conversations on the Covid 19 Pandemic Body: Violence and Touch-Krishna Menon, Deepti Sachdev and Rukmini Sen 4 The Politics of Un-Covering in India-Ambar Ahmad. Part II: STRUGGLE. 5 New Technologies and Gender Reproducing Bodies Resisiting Bodies. Bijayalaxmi Nanda 6 Bodily Integrity and the Politics of Tradition-Nayema Nasir 7 My Honor, My Crime- Aysha Baqir 8 Ghosts in search of Bodies- Shalini Masih Part III: RESISTANCE-9 Inside Girls Transgressing the hudd in Pakistani feminist poetry-Anu Aneja 10 The Yakshi as the Monstruous Feminine Some Representations from the Malayalam Speaking Region-Mamatha and Bindu 11 The Marginalised Tribal Body in Mahashweta Devi's Stories-Meenakshi Malhotra 12 The Body in Submission An Offering to Feminism- Jaya Sharma Part IV: PROTEST 13 Voicing Democracy and Reclaiming Citizenship: A Dialogic Conversation about Shaheen Bagh-Meenakshi Gopinath, Krishna Menon, Rukmini Sen and Niharika Banerjea 14 Campus Feminism and the Nation-State Women Students' Leadership of the Anti-CAA-NRC Uprising in India-Tamanna Basu 15 Rizia Rahman's Rokter Okshor Politics of Prostitution and the Consciousness of Civic Society in Bangladesh-Sohana Manzoor Part V: CRITIQUE 16 Disabled Body Pain and Vulnerability-Anita Ghai 17 Binarised Bodies Towards a Politics of Inarticulacy Instability and Anonymity- Giti Chandra 18 Knees and Feet Together Shoulders Back and Chest Out Embodying the Hidden Curriculum through Women's Girlhood Narratives- Aakansha D’Cruz Part VI: REPRESENTATIONS AND NEW DIRECTIONS 19 Fragments of Memory The Thoa Khalsa incident of 1947 in the Amritsar Partition Museum- Shuchi Kapila 20 Not an island unto themselves but a part of the main women voices from the Sri Lankan conflict- Simran Chadha 21 On Umasangit- Nilofer Kaul 22 Affirmative Multiplicities: Towards an Anthropocene Theory of Corporeality- Brijesh Rana
Biography
Meenakshi Malhotra teaches English in Hansraj College, Delhi University, India, and has edited two textbooks, Representing the Self and Claiming the I. Her recent publications include articles on life writing in Women’s and Gender Studies in India: Crossings (2019), “Subjugated Knowledges and Emergent Voices” in Revolving around India(s) (2020) and “The Engendering of Hurt” in The State of Hurt (2016).
Krishna Menon is Professor at the School of Human Studies and former Dean at the School of Human Studies, Ambedkar University Delhi. Her research and teaching interests span political theory, Indian politics, critical music studies and gender studies. Her most recent co-edited book Doing Feminisms in the Academy: Identity, Institutional Pedagogy and Critical Classrooms in India and the UK (2020) is based on a UGC UKIERI Project with the University of Edinburgh of which she was the Principal Investigator.
Rachana Johri is former Professor at the School of Human Studies and Director of the Centre for Psychotherapy and Clinical Research at Ambedkar University Delhi, India, where she teaches psychology, psychosocial studies and gender studies. Her recent publications include “New Bodies in Cities: Contested Technologies of the Self in Urban India” in Contemporary Practices of Citizenship in Asia and the West: Care of the Self Vol 2; “Feminism in the Neo-Liberal University: Expanding Field or Shrinking Space” in Doing Feminisms in the Academy: Identity, Institutional Pedagogy and Critical Classrooms in India and the UK (2020) and “Crafting Spaces at New Intersections: In Search of Psychoanalytic Feminism for India” in Women’s and Gender Studies in India: Crossings (2019).
