Towards reparative readings: reflections on feminist solidarities in a troubling present

ABSTRACT

The present is a peculiar time for feminists in India. On the one hand, debates of over two decades now make us sharply aware of vital importance of the intersecting multiple axes of power in shaping patriarchy and hence of the need to acknowledge mutual differences and inequalities. On the other, the high-tide of Hindutva nationalistic jingoism sweeps us all together as ‘anti-nationalist’, as equally dangerous to the Hindutvavaadi nation. Not surprisingly then, in no other time has the need to rethink and rebuild feminist solidarities felt so urgent. The question would perhaps be to ask how we could deploy the insights about the end of ‘romantic sisterhood’ to produce a thorough critique of feminist practice. I contend that for this to happen, intersectional analysis needs to be applied as a tool of feminist self-transformation, acknowledged as integral to lived feminist ethics, and not merely something that figures in the knowledge that we produce. This essay is an attempt to think aloud this challenge and what it entails, from Kerala, a society where feminism is irrevocably pluralized at present, but where feminists do face the Hindutvavaadi threat of exclusion as ‘immoral’ and ‘anti-national’. I propose a new mode of engagement, feminist maitri which may give rise to what Eve Sedgewick has called ‘non-paranoid’ readings alongside the necessary readings of the ills that hamper trust-building in the field of feminist politics – bringing hopefully a delicate balance.

KEYWORDS:

• Feminist solidarities
• alliance-building
• intersectionality
• maitri
• differences

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. This thrust was governmentalizing because women were treated not as a politicized category claiming rights and making demands on the state for both welfare and justice, but as a governmental category that received welfare. Further, it aimed at mobilizing below-poverty-line women into a state-centred civil society that would manage and implement welfare distribution activities at the local level. Devika 2016.

2. For key discussions, see John ed., Women’s Studies in India.

3. Devika, ‘Feminism and Late Twentieth-Century Governmentality in Kerala, India’.

4. Devika and Kodoth, ‘Sexual Violence and Predicament of Feminist’.

5. I…For the significance of ‘women’ to the attempt to refurbish the hegemony of the mainstream left in Kerala through democratic decentralization, see Devika, ‘Participatory Democracy or ‘Transformative Appropriation’?’

6. It may be queried whether these ‘mainstream feminisms’ deserve to be recognized as ‘feminism’ anymore, but that is a question for feminist praxis, evolving as it is. For the purposes of this essay, I do not dismiss the self-claims of such formations to be feminist, but awareness of the limitations of their claims is one of the starting points of the present exercise itself. The two strands may seem distinctive but may be viewed as a single mainstream feminism because they take ‘Women’ as their common object despite many other differences.

7. For an overview of the issues and debates of the early years of the new millennium, see, Bharadwaj, ‘Mitthyakalkkappuram’.

8. This is evident from the websites of Kerala’s leading feminist NGOs, Sakhi and Anweshi. http://sakhikerala.org/?page_id=10; http://anweshi.org/, Accessed August 10, 2016. For ‘governance feminism’, see, Halley et al., ‘From the International to the Local in Feminist Legal Responses to Rape, Prostitution/Sex Work, and Sex Trafficking’.

9. SEWA Kerala, which recently gained trade union status, is the oldest of these; many new women’s trade unions, including the one formed in the wake of the Munnar women tea-garden workers’ struggles, are very recent. Most of them continue to be highly local, and their formation is often spontaneous.

10. The Kiss of Love protests in Kerala (2014–2015) brought this to light. See, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Kiss_of_Love_protest], Accessed, 9 August 2016.

11. See Devika and Thampi, New Lamps for Old?; Scaria, ‘A Dictated Space?’; Nair and Moolakkattu, ‘Women Component Plan at the Village Panchayat Level in Kerala’; and Williams et al., ‘Making Space for Women in Urban Governance?’

12. The latest attempt was through the ‘Nirbhaya’ project, launched in 2013, aimed at protecting women from sexual violence, setting up special mechanisms to aid victims and to mobilize civil society through special committees and groups. This combined seamlessly with anti-trafficking measures and was guided by the well-known anti-trafficking activist like Sunitha Krishnan and right-wing social activists like SugathaKumari, who chaired the five-member expert committee that recommended the programme. There was no representation of Kerala’s feminist organizations in the committee. Krishnan’s effort to set up Nirbhaya on the lines of her own anti-trafficking work through Prajwala, however, was not successful and she resigned in 2014, citing official apathy. See http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/thiruvananthapuram/Nirbhaya-project-adviser-Sunitha-Krishnan-resigns/articleshow/39667075.cms, accessed, 9 January 2017.

13. See, Meera Velayudhan, ‘Kerala Rape Case’. See also, Devika, ‘Aspects of Socioeconomic Exclusion in Kerala, India’.

14. Hindess, ‘Liberalism – What’s in a Name?’ 23–39.

15. See Prakkanam, ‘Becoming Society’; and Janu, ‘We Need to Build Huts All Over Kerala, Again and Again’.

16. In my own efforts to engage young college students from Kerala in conversation during 2014–2015 to collect themes for my forthcoming introductory book in Malayalam on gender and politics, this question came up again and again, and not just from students of the leading mainstream left student organizations, but more stridently from students engaged in Dalit and Muslim politics as well.

17. See Turner, ‘Reconciling Feminist and Anti-Caste Analyses’; Menon, Seeing Like a Feminist; and John ed., Women’s Studies in India, ibid.

18. See Spelman, ‘Anger and Insubordination’, 263–73; and Woodward, ‘Anger … and Anger’, 73–96.

19. Ahmed, ‘Feminist Killjoys’.

20. Lorde, Sister/Outsider.

21. Yuval-Davis, ‘Intersectionality and Feminist Politics’, 193–209.

22. Crenshaw 1989, 139–67.

23. As Elen Turner, ibid, argues about Rege’s, Writing Caste/Writing Gender.

24. For a detailed account of the early events in KOL, see, Sasi, ‘License to Kiss?’.

25. For the contours of the continuing feud between KOL opponents and its supporters, see the news report in Times of India, 19 December, 2015: [http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/kozhikode/Activists-divided-on-Manava-Sangamam/articleshow/50242847.cms], accessed, 9 August 2016. Also see, ulFarrooque, ‘“Fascisathe Ethirkkunna” “Manushyarum” “Amaanavarum”’.

26. ‘Down Town to Kiss of Love’.

27. See, Maganti, ‘I Organized Kiss of Love’. The edition of KOL held in Thiruvananthapuram was purposefully named ‘Kiss Against Fascism’ and explicitly condemned secularized untouchability in public spaces as a major means of bolstering existing distances between caste–communities in the interest of upper castes.

28. Raj on Facebook, ‘OttaNottilTeerathaRashtriya Dharma Sankadangal’.

29. See, Devika, ‘Beyond Trumpism and Rumpism’. Also, ‘Radical’ Critics and KaBodyScapes’, https://kafila.online/2016/04/30/radical-critics-and-kabodyscapes/, accessed, 9 January 2017.

30. See Cutting-Gray, ‘Hannah Arendt, Feminism, and the Politics of Alterity’.

31. Kristeva, Nations without Nationalism.

32. Kumar, ‘Radical Equality’, 334.

33. Ibid., 332.

34. Ibid.,331.

35. Ibid.,335.

36. Pratt, ‘Identity’, 29–77.

37. Mohanty and Martin, ‘What’s Home Got to Do With It?’ 85–105.

38. Ibid., 94.

39. Pratt, ‘Identity’, 59.

40. Paul Gilroy, quoted in Nira Yuval-Davis, ‘Intersectionality and Feminist Politics’, 4.

41. Ibid.

42. Chakravarti, ‘Conceptualising Brahminical Patriarchy in Early India’; and Tharuand and Niranjana, ‘Problems for a Contemporary Theory’.

43. Mohanty and Martin, ‘What’s Home Got to Do With It?’ 93.

44. Menon, ‘Is Feminism about Women? A Critical View’.

45. Nash, ‘Re-thinking Intersectionality’.

46. McCall, ‘The Complexity’.

47. John, ‘Intersectionality’.

48. ibid.

49. Frankenberg and Mani, ‘Crosscurrents, Crosstalk’, 124–145.

50. Yuval-Davis, ‘What is Transversal Politics?’ 94–98.

51. Sedgewick, ‘Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading’, 146.

52. Walker,  ‘Womanist’, p. xii.