File spoon-archives/sa-cyborgs.archive/sa-cyborgs_1996/96-08-21.230, message 86


Date: Fri, 12 Apr 1996 07:48:21 -0400 (EDT)
From: bhaatasari <gajjala+-AT-pitt.edu>
Subject: Re: another thread - a genuine request for help



When V.Ritter asked about biblio ref to Chatterjee's work on women and 
the nation, I forgot to mention the book on
"The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories"
by Partha Chatterjee (1993)Princeton Univ Press.

For those of you are familiar with this work -

what do you think of his conclusion to the chapter on Women and the 
Nation (esp the `A Pessimistic Afterword' section and the para before - 
part of which i quote below...)


" ..the story of nationalist emancipation is necessarily a story of 
betrayal. Because it could confer freedom only by imposing at the same 
time a whole set of new controls, it could define a cultural identity for 
the nation only by excluding many from its fold; and it could grant the 
dignity of citizenship to some only because the others always needed to 
be represented and and could not be allowed to speak for 
themselves.....relations between the people and the nation, the nation 
and the state, relations which nationalism claims to have resolved once 
and for all, are relations which continue to be contested and are 
therefore open to negotiation all over again." 

page 155.

(and yes this also related to the cliterodectomy issue, since we know 
that that was made a very focal/central point for nationalism - from both 
the nationalist side and the colonizers' side...)


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