Claiming Feminism, Risking Politics: Working Notes on Why it Matters

<strong>Centre for English Studies</strong> <strong>Claiming Feminism, Risking Politics: Working Notes on Why it Matters</strong> by <strong>Shilpa Phadke</strong> chaired by <strong>Brinda Bose</strong> <strong>on Monday October 5, 2015</strong> 'In this not-quite-yet work-in-progress presentation, I think through some responses to my recently published paper, 'Risking Feminism: Voices from the Classroom' (EPW, April 2015). To do this, I will raise questions regarding the claiming of feminism as a politics. "What", varied women have queried, "is vested in the claiming of feminism as a label?" Continuing this line of argument, I will reflect briefly on ideas around fitting in and gatekeeping in relation to feminism, and the concomitant anxiety associated with espousing a politics. I will also engage with a recent exercise in a postgraduate classroom where students reflect on their personal-political engagements with feminism. Here I will focus on what it means to write together as feminists. In the final section I will look at the politicisation of young women in the post-December 2012 scenario and reflect on some transformations being wrought, including the kind of parenting young feminist women might seek. As with the 'Risking Feminism' paper, I will weave my own feminist biography alongside the narratives I engage.' Shilpa Phadke is a researcher, writer and pedagogue. She teaches at the School of Media and Cultural Studies at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. She has been educated at St. Xavier's College, SNDT University, TISS in Mumbai and the University of Cambridge, UK. She is co-author of Why Loiter? Women and Risk on Mumbai Streets (Penguin 2011). She has published both in academic journals and anthologies and in the popular media. She has previously taught under-graduate sociology as St. Xavier's College, Mumbai. Her areas of concern include gender and the politics of space, the middle classes, sexuality and the body, feminist politics among young women, reproductive subjectivities, feminist parenting, and pedagogic practices.c