Changing the Subject: Feminist and Queer Politics in Neoliberal India

Monday, November 21, 2022

12:00 pm – 1:30 pm EST/GMT-5 

Online Event

12 - 1:30 New York l 6 – 7:30 PM Vienna 

The Transnational Feminism, Solidarity, and Social Justice project invites members of the OSUN community to a talk by Srila Roy--the latest in its lecture series.

In Changing the Subject, Srila Roy maps the rapidly transforming terrain of gender and sexual politics in India under the conditions of global neoliberalism. The consequences of India’s liberalization were paradoxical: the influx of global funds for social development and NGOs signaled the cooptation and depoliticization of struggles for women’s rights, even as they amplified the visibility and vitalization of queer activism.

Roy reveals the specificity of activist and NGO work around issues of gender and sexuality through a decade-long ethnography of two West Bengal organizations, one working on lesbian, bisexual, and transgender issues and the other on rural women’s empowerment. Tracing changes in feminist governmentality that were entangled in transnational neoliberalism, Roy shows how historical and highly local feminist currents shaped contemporary queer and non-queer neoliberal feminisms. The interplay between historic techniques of activist governance and queer feminist governmentality’s focus on changing the self offers a new way of knowing feminism—both as always already co-opted and as a transformative force in the world.

Srila Roy is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg and 2022 Hunt-Simes Visiting Professor in Sexuality Studies at the University of Sydney. 

Join via Zoom

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Website: https://osun-eu.zoom.us/j/92423394182?pwd=UnBvM3llUHNGem9kOTB0cStFWURmdz09