Walk in India and South Africa: notes towards a decolonial and transnational feminist politics

Abstract

The essay discusses Maya Rao's Walk and The Mothertongue Project's Walk: South Africa to explore the languages of transnational and embodied feminist politics that these performances conjure. The two performances are instances of artistic responses to sexualized violence in India and South Africa as they engage with the politics of walking in the city. Working with Chandra Talpade Mohanty's formulation of feminist solidarity (2013) and Boaventura de Sousa Santos's translation-as-dialogue (2014), I discuss the radical forms of feminist methodological imaginations attempted and nurtured by them. This essay examines the political and aesthetic potential of translatability of performance in the world of global asymmetries and the implications it holds for intersectional feminist conversations in the global South.

Keywords:

• walking
• gendered violence
• transnational feminism
• decoloniality
• Maya Rao
• The Mothertongue Project

Acknowledgements

The research for this article was made possible by Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant under the aegis of ‘New Imaginaries’ project at the Women’s and Gender Studies Department, University of the Western Cape. Grant no: G-31700714.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 Many thanks to Mark Fleishman and Sruti Bala for their helpful comments on my essay. Thanks also to the Centre for Humanities Research and Women’s and Gender Studies Department at the University of the Western Cape, for supporting me with the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship that facilitated this writing.

2 The Apartheid-era Population Registration Act, 1950 codified the South African population based on their skin colour and ethnicity. According to the South African racial demographics, the population is divided into five ethnic groups: White South African, Black African, Coloured, Asian and Others. Coloured are a multiracial ethnic group with mixed ancestry.

3 Formed in 2000, The Mothertongue Project is an all-women collective of artists, activists, academics and practitioners committed to personal and social transformation through participatory theatre and integrated arts methodologies. Using expressive arts therapies, their work creates spaces for women and youth located at the margins to speak their stories and share their experiences in order to gain power and credence within their bodies and communities. Apart from Sara Matchett, the other co-founder is Rehane Abrahams, a South African actor, writer, director and theatre-maker from Cape Town.

4 A.P. Singh is quoted as saying,

If my daughter or sister engaged in pre-marital activities and disgraced herself and allowed herself to lose face and character by doing such things, I would most certainly take this sort of sister or daughter to my farmhouse, and in front of my entire family, I would put petrol on her and set her alight.

5 A three-member committee comprising Retired Justice J.S. Verma, Retired Justice Leila Seth and Solicitor General Gopal Subramanium was constituted on 23 December 2012 to recommend amendments to criminal laws of India. The committee submitted its report on 23 January 2013, which included stalking, voyeurism, acid attacks and trafficking in the definition of sexual violence.

6 For reference, this is a clip of the performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkTyvOKUZ4E.

7 The text is from Rao’s performance on 21 February 2013. All translations from Hindi are my own.

8 Love-jihad is a campaign run by Hindu right-wing groups against what they say is a Muslim conspiracy to convert Hindu girls to Islam by feigning love. ‘Anti-Romeo’ squad was launched in March 2017 by the newly appointment Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh to ‘protect’ women from suspected youth who harassed them. The current ruling government has banned the consumption of beef owing to the sacredness of the cow in the history of Hinduism. Failure to abide by this law has led to lynching of Muslims by Hindu mobs and invites imprisonment of 5 years.

9 For reference, this is a clip from the performance that took place at the National Arts Festival 2018 in Grahamstown: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZJddahknJ0&t=48s.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Andrew W. Mellon Foundation: [Grant Number G-31700714].