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Report from the CSAS-Sponsored 2006 Feminist Pre-Conference at Madison-Wisconsin
by S. Charusheela
South Asian Feminism beyond Borders: Contradiction, Contestation, and Alliance in Transnational Context, October 19, 2006, Madison, WI
I've been going to the feminist pre-conference at Madison for three years now - first, in 2004, simply to attend and out of a desire to find a space for meeting other South Asianists working on issues of gender and feminism from a variety of perspectives, and since then (2005 and 2006), as a member of the organizing committee and active participant. The pre-conference has become one of the most exciting spaces at the South Asia conference at Madison, a place for taking up key issues facing those of us who work within/through South Asian feminist perspectives. The support from the Center for South Asian Studies at UHM for the past two years has been vital for creating and nurturing this important event, and so before reporting on the feminist pre-conference to CSAS, I'd like to wear my 'feminist pre-conference organizing committee' hat and thank Shankar, Amy, and the folks at CSAS for supporting this extremely valuable initiative within South Asian Studies!
Each year, the pre-conference is structured so as to generate conversations on themes/topics. Thus, instead of finished papers (which would be closer to the framework of the main conference), we ask people to provide short presentations/reflections and then leave ample time for discussion. Each year/s conference theme is born from the types of issues/themes/questions that emerge as central ones that many of us are grappling with and would like to take on/share for discussion at the next pre-conference, each yearÕs conference ends with a wrap-up which is the basis for choosing the following year's themes. Fall 2006's theme, ÒSouth Asian Feminism beyond Borders: Contradiction, Contestation, and Alliance in Transnational Context,Ó emerged from discussions about the question of complicity in South Asian feminist research and practice, as we identified transnational forces and issues as the ones that were repeatedly named in taking up or discussing complicity. Rafia Zakaria organized the pre-conference, along with support from Jyoti Puri, Anagana Chatterji, and myself. The response was wonderful, with 11 presenters, and about 30 audience members who stayed for most of the pre-conference (another 10-15 came for parts of the 2:00-7:00 pm session), with rich discussion. The presentations and discussion ranged from the literary and historical to the ethnographic-social-political, and the questions posed ranged from transnational in terms of globalization, to the transnational in terms of engagements within and across the borders and boundaries of nations in the region. Instead of providing a blow-by-blow of all presentations, I'll just highlight a few, and raise some of the issues/themes that stayed with me from the rich conversations at the pre-conference.
Sangeeta Ray (University of Maryland), familiar to CSAS as a visitor to our Spring symposium a few years ago, presented on reading as a practice that can help us find/locate the transnational contexts of the seemingly-local, and turned our attention to environment, in the sense of the shape of the natural landscape (and how it changes) in fiction. Shubra Gururani (York University) and Kavita Philip (UC Irvine) turned our attention to another arena where reading/discursive practices have troubled settled relations Ð in science studies. What was particularly interesting in these presentations was the way in which the transnational presented itself both as a terrain that shaped issues, and as a place whereby we must rethink our analysis in non-simplistic ways, looking not simply at 'for' or 'against' the transnational and the local, but rethink the ontological parameters through which we 'read' these distinctions and experiences.
If reading and revisiting the ontological and epistemic categories used in the studies of literature and history provided one locus of discussion, engaging with the material implications of 'globalization' in its more conventional rendering as the export-zone worker, the NRI, bollywood, was another location. Radha Hegde (New York University) and Bandana Purkayastha and Anjana Narayan (University of Connecticut, California Polytichnic Institute) both presented on different aspects of these processes. Not only was it engaging (Purkayastha and NarayanÕs discussion of the 'bollywood wedding' was hilarious, while Hegde's intervention both reminded us about those whose issues become, who themselves become, invisible to globalization, yet managed to raise questions about how to address these invisibilities without simple sentimentalizing or erasure of the subjectivity and voice of others), it also pushed us to think more carefully about how we 'read' these events, experiences, issues. Here, more 'conventional' concerns about the transnational intersected with the more 'esoteric' ones of reading practices Ð just as questions of the 'shape' of the material/transnational terrain emerged strongly in the discussions of reading practices highlighted above.
Rebecca Kenk (University of Tenesse) and Kim Berry (Humboldt State), both spoke of the ways in which by situating their/our research as transnational practice, we are forced to confront questions of ethics and orientation in our research practices, bringing and carrying forward the discussions from 2005 into 2006, and providing answers that focused us again, both on the material terrain and the reading/epistemic practices as conjoined parts of their negotiations. And Basuli Deb (Michigan State University), Shanna Dietz (Indiana University) and Angana Chatterji and Annie Paradise (California Institute of Integral Studies), through their discussions of Caste and the appropriations/representations of Phoolan Devi in global circuits, of the impact of neoliberal reform on Muslims, and women caught in the cross-border struggles over boundary and nation in India-occupied Kashmir, reminded us that transnationalism entails both 'First-Third' world borders, and borders within. I particularly liked how, by raising the issue of Women's citizenship in Indian-owned Kashmir, Chatterji and Paradise brought to the fore a point that was part of the discussions as they emerged Ð that South Asia itself is a region, not a nation, and hence South Asian feminism must also think itself transnationally, as having to engage with the boundaries and borders within the region itself. Indeed, many of the discussions (such as Hegde's and Ray's presentations) similarly highlighted the boundaries and fractures 'within' the arena they engage with as itself a product of transnational forces, but also as something that forces us to 'imagine' transnationally, across boundaries, in our responses and approaches.
I especially liked that since the presenters were not 'organized' disciplinarily with the 'ethnographers' here, the 'text-folks' there, and so on (i.e., not as I have organized/thematized them above), the conversations and exchanges emerged naturally from the presentations themselves. We ended with a discussion of what we'd like to do next year, and it seemed as if the actual practices and epistemologies of engaging with materials emerged as a key theme in discussions and presentations, as central to our engagement with transnational forces. So, looks like the practices, shapes of our work and scholarly interventions as South Asian feminists, will be a key emerging theme for next year! Hope to see you there, and that CSAS continues to support this extremely important space for South Asian feminist reflection and conversation.
S. Charusheela
Associate Professor, Women's Studies
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