File spoon-archives/seminar-13.archive/south-asian-women_1995-1996/seminar-13.nov95-mar96, message 34


Date: Wed, 29 Nov 1995 07:38:41 -0500 (EST)
From: bhaatasari <gajjala+-AT-pitt.edu>
To: seminar-13-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU



Reading re-reading re-re-reading my own reading and generalizations based 
on generalizations .... what does it mean when individual SA/Indian men and 
women say that these generalisations do not describe them?

Do we then resort to the language of "science" or "stats" to say that
"oh but you are not the `norm'" - and you find all these "anomalies"?

what is the relationship between practice and theory?

if we wish to narrate the particular, does that mean we make the "choice"
of rejecting a systemic approach? 


when i read and re-read texts that "describe" my history and my society - 
through the words of Partha Chatterjee or Annanya Bhattacharjee -

i say *yes* at times.

but sometimes i'm angry too - no, for my father, my brthers, for my 
husband, for my son, "allowing" me or my sisters or my sisters-inlaw or 
their daughters to work and think side-by-side with men was not
"merely" a survival tactic....

and yet... the cultural expectations were/are always there at some hidden 
level.

someone wondered (an internet friend, of course) 
if it is ever possible to deconstruct gender?

there are men and women in this forum - men with wives, daughters, 
mothers, sisters, 
friends... women with husbands, brothers, fathers, sons, friends....

do the generalizations i posted in my last long message make you angry?
do they even touch upon your experience? why, why why?



Radhika


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check http://www.pitt.edu/~rxgst6/rpr 
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