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Sisterly Disaffection: Women's Colleges, Theatre and the Limits of Dissent

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2018

Abstract

This essay explores contemporary cultural practices of feminist politics emerging within the women's college campus at the University of Delhi. Through the study of two examples of a public demonstration and campaign against high prices of certain essential provisions and a formal performance outside the campus, the essay tries to map cultural practices, transgressions and political potentials, but also the limits and shortcomings. The essay intends to read these examples through a gender critique and alternate registers of sisterhood, collective imagination and solidarity.

Type
Essays: Pedagogies of Citizenship: Performance, Institutions and Gendering
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 2018 

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References

NOTES

1 Fraser, Nancy, ‘Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy’, Social Text, 25–6 (1990), pp. 5680.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Tharu, Susie, ‘Citizenship and Its Discontents’, in Nair, Janaki and John, Mary E., eds., A Question of Silence: Sexual Economies of Modern India (Delhi: Kali for Women, 1998), pp. 216–42Google Scholar.

3 John, Mary E., ‘Gender and Development in India – 1970s–1990s: Some Reflections on the Constitutive Role of Contexts’, Economic and Political Weekly, 31, 47 (1996), pp. 3071–7.Google Scholar

4 I borrow the term ‘agonistic space’ from Chantal Mouffe's understanding of a ‘vibrant democracy’, where decision-making does not appear out of technical problem-solving processes by experts, but by conflicts between political adversaries, which is often an unsolvable situation. See Mouffe, Chantal, ‘Artistic Activism and Agonistic Spaces’, Art and Research: A Journal of Ideas, Contexts and Methods, 1, 2 (Summer 2007), at http://www.artandresearch.org.uk/v1n2/mouffe.html, accessed 7 December 2017.Google Scholar

5 ‘List of Colleges/Departments Affiliated to DUSU 2015-16’, at www.du.ac.in/du/uploads/DUSU-15/10082015_List%20of%20College%20affiliated%20to%20DUSU.pdf, last accessed 20 September 2017.

6 Chatterjee, Partha, The Politics of the Governed: Reflections on Popular Politics in Most of the World (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), pp. 3540.Google Scholar

7 Wittig, Monique, ‘One Is Not Born a Woman’, in McCann, Carole R. and Kim, Seung-Kyung, eds., Feminist Theory Reader: Local and Global Perspectives (New York: Routledge, 2013), pp. 246–51Google Scholar.

8 The emotions galvanized by the café protests culminated in a very successful Women's Day Night March on 7 March, when a significantly larger crowd joined in to collectively lodge a police report against sexual harassers and predators near the college during celebrations of Holi. On a slightly longer scale, anonymous emails regarding college-related issues such as implementation of the semester system were being sent out until as late as September 2010, under various names, such as TBR or LSR Ki Awaaz (The Voice of LSR).

9 Foucault, Michel, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–77, ed. Gordon, Colin (New York: The Harvester Press, 1980), p. 138.Google Scholar

10 The principal's opinion about the TBR parcha, as voiced in the Lady Shri Ram College morning assembly, shortly after the café dharna in February 2009.

11 Examples included sit-ins and dharnas, as well as chakka-jam modes of protest that we see in the Jantar Mantar area. Many of the students had taken part or at least witnessed such protests as participants and spectators.

12 Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi, is famous for an atmosphere of progressive, autonomous student movements.

13 Kaul was also already a member of the international repertoire for the Duende School of Physical Theatre under British director John Britton.

14 Pedrero is a Madrid-based playwright and actor. She is known for plays that have very regular, everyday settings, and often involve exclusively two- to three-person interactions onstage. The three plays were The Colour of August (El color de Agosto, 1987), A Night in the Subway (Solos esta noche, 1989) and The Voucher (Resguardo Personal, 1985). These plays have been performed together before, in episodic fashion, at the Pace Downtown Theater at Schimmel Center for the Arts, New York City, 5–8 December 1991, directed by Timur Djordjadze. See Zatlin, Phyllis, Theatrical Translation and Film Adaptation: A Practitioner's View (Bristol: Multilingual Matters Ltd, 2005), p. 11 Google Scholar.

15 Rich, Adrienne, ‘Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence’, Signs, 5, 4 (1980), pp. 631–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 Ahmed, Sara, ‘Queer Feelings’, in Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004), pp. 144–65Google Scholar, here p. 163.