En-Gendering India

Preface

“…Among the many works which appeared independently of each other in this field, the following are worthy of special attention: Contemporary African Literature and the Politics of Gender, by Florence Stratton (1994): Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Context, by Anne McClintock (1995); Body Space: Destabilizing Geographies of Gender and Sexuality (1996), edited by Nancy Duncan; Dangerous Liaisons: Gender, Nation and Postcolonial Perspectives, by Anne McClintock, Aamir Mufti, and Ella Shohat (1997); Women, Citizenship and Difference, edited by Nira Yuval- Davis and Pnina Werbner (1998); Gendered Ironies of Nationalism. Sexing the Nation, edited by Mayer Tamar (1999); En-gendering India: Woman and Nation in Postcolonial Narratives, by Sangeeta Ray (2000); Women and the Nation's Narrative: Gender and Nationalism in Sri Lanka, by Neloufer de Mel (2001); Stories of Women: Gender and Narrative in the Postcolonial Nation, by Elleke Boehmer (2005); and The Nation Writ Small: African Fictions and Feminisms 1958Feminisms -1988, by Susan Z. Andrade (2011).…”

Introduction

“…hinges, to a large degree, on the determinate subject position of "woman" for its articulation', and it is this which has led to the entrenched but not irresolvable tension between nationalist and feminist agendas in many countries. 7 In short, national difference, like other forms of difference, is constituted through the medium of the sexual binary, using the figure of the woman as a primary vehicle. 8 This claim is supported by another, which I share with Sangeeta Ray, Kumkum Sangari, Sudesh Vaid, and others, that no theory engaging fully with either (national) resistance or sociality at both micropolitical and macropolitical levels can adopt 'a gender-neutral method of inquiry'.…”