Decolonising gender in South Asia: a border thinking perspective

ABSTRACT

The current collection elaborates on various ways of thinking about gender outside the epistemic frame of coloniality/modernity that is bound to the European colonial project. Following Walter Mignolo, we call for epistemic disobedience using border thinking as the necessary condition for thinking decolonially. Borders in this case are conceptualised not just as geographical borders of nation states, they also signify the borders of modern/colonial world, epistemic and ontological orders that the gendered and racialised populations of ex-colonies inhabit. We claim that dwelling, thinking and writing from these borders create conditions of epistemic disobedience to coloniality/modernity discourses of the West. The contributors of this collection, all women of colour from South Asia and South Asian diaspora write from and about these borders that challenge the colonial universality of thinking about gender. They are writing from and with subalternised racial/ethnic/sexual spaces and bodies located geographically in South Asia and South Asian diasporic contexts. In this way, when coloniality/modernity is shaping universalist understandings of gender we are able to use a broader canon of thought to produce a more pluriversal understanding of the world.

KEYWORDS:

• Gender
• South Asia
• decolonisation
• coloniality
• modernity

Notes

1. Azim et al., “Negotiating New Terrains.”

2. de Alwis and Jayawardena, Embodied Violence.

3. Menon and Bhasin, Borders & Boundaries; Mohsin, The Politics of Nationalism; Ibrahim Ami Birangana; and de Alwis and Jayawardena, Embodied Violence.

4. Radhakrishnan, “Professional Women”; Hussain, Contemporary Muslim Girlhood; and Hussein, Rethinking New Womanhood.

5. Mohanty, Feminism without Borders, 3.

6. Suleri, “Woman Skin Deep”; Odeh, “Post-colonial Feminism”; Yegenoglu, Colonial Fantasies; McClintock, Imperial Leather; Parshar, “Feminism and Postcolonialism”; Mohanty, “Under Western Eyes”; and Connel, “Rethinking Gender.”

7. Gandhi, Post-colonial Theory, 102.

8. Parashar, “Feminism and Postcolonialism,” 371.

9. Manion and Shah, “Decolonizing Gender.”

10. Epstein and Morrell, “Approaching Southern Theory,” 469.

11. Quijano, “Coloniality/Modernity,” 215.

12. Lugones, “Heterosexualism and the Colonial,” 190.

13. See note 11 above.

14. Mignolo, “Geopolitics of Sensing and Knowing,” 131.

15. Ibid., 133.

16. Madlingozi, “Decolonising ‘Decolonisation’.”

17. Mignolo, “Geopolitics of Sensing and Knowing,” 130.

18. Ibid., 130–131.

19. Grosfoguel, “Postcolonial Theory.”

20. Mignolo, “Geopolitics of Sensing and Knowing,” 137.

21. Tuck and Young, “Decolonisation is Not a Metaphor.”

22. Ibid., 3.

23. Mawhinney, “Giving up the Ghost,” 17.

24. Fanon, The Wretched.

25. Wa Thiong’o, Decolonising the Mind.

26. Slater, “Post-colonial Questions,” 647.

27. Memmi, The Colonizer, 127.

28. Tiwari, “Bordering Life.”

29. Kumari, “Menstruating Women.”

30. Maji, “The Culinary.”

31. Raghavan, “Prayers to Kali.”

32. Khoja-Moolji, “Re-animating Muslim.”

33. Hussain and Hussein, “The (Im)possibility.”

34. Shroff, “Pious Capital.”

35. Bhanot, “A Decolonial Reading.”

36. Mohanty, “Under Western Eyes.”

37. Mignolo, “Geopolitics of Sensing and Knowing,” 497.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nazia Hussein

Dr. Nazia Hussein is lecturer in Sociology at Bristol University. She is a feminist sociologist and her research is broadly in the areas of gender, race, ethnicity, religion and class with a particular focus on South Asia and South Asian diaspora in the UK. She is the author of The New Muslim Women of Bangladesh (forthcoming in 2020) and the editor of Rethinking New Womanhood: Practices of gender, class culture and religion in South Asia. Her current research investigates ‘New Muslim’ identities in Britain through a study of British Muslim women’s public and political activism.

Saba Hussain

Dr Saba Hussain is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the Department of Sociology, University of Warwick. She is the author of Contemporary Muslim Girlhoods in India: A Study of Social Justice, Identity and Agency in Assam, published by Routledge London. Her research interests are in areas of gender, education and extremism in India and in the UK. She received her PhD from University Warwick and holds Masters degrees from London School of Economics (Development Studies) and Delhi School of Economics (Sociology).