Date: Sat, 14 Nov 1998 08:58:54 -0700 (MST)
From: Rinita Mazumdar <rinita-AT-nmt.edu>
Subject: Dowry Conference: Feminism/Leftism


This is my second attempt to write this, the first post got lost somehow.
Anyway, my point is that I DEFINITELY think that Partha was excluded
from the conference because of his ``political leftism''. I myself
find no space to be a ``feminist'' anymore because of this entire
de-politicization of what I consider the hijacking of ``feminist
politics'' in India by bourgeois liberalism.

It is my belief that since women's question came to India with the
rat-race of laissez-faire economics, a distinction between the
civil/political (public/private) is slowly emerging; and as the latter
concerns the mainthrust of feminist politics, it seems that in the
enthusiasm to create a ``civil society'' via rousseau/locke
what we see is (theoretically) a dialectic of the women question
within the ``safe space'' of bourgeois a-politicalness.

Partha is a very old friend and I know how much he has written on this
subject. So his credibility is not questionable, his politics
is in the terrain of ``civil society''. People like him and
me now-a-days have no space to speak from.

No wonder by making women's question ``public'' the right-wingers are
the only ones giving the subaltern some space to speak from.

Rinita