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Book Review: Feminist Translation Studies: Local and Transnational Perspectives edited by Olga Castro and Emek Ergun

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Publisher: Routledge. Date of Publication: 2017. Language: English. ISBN: 9780367365813

Reviewed by

[wp-svg-icons icon=”user” wrap=”i”] John Chi Chon FONG [wp-svg-icons icon=”envelop” wrap=”i”]

Department of English, University of Macau, Macau

Rupkatha Journal, Vol. 14, Issue 1, January-March, 2022, Pages 1–4. https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v14n1.21

Received: 13 Sept 2021 | Accepted: 22 Oct 2021 | First Published: 05 February 2022

(This review is published under the Themed Issue Contemporary East and Southeast Asian Literary and Cultural Studies)
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Book Review: Feminist Translation Studies: Local and Transnational Perspectives edited by Olga Castro and Emek Ergun

Currently, there are hardly any works that explicitly claim the political title “feminist” or “activist” while fully exploring feminist translation. Without necessarily embracing and recognizing the transgressive or reactionary processes of translation in feminist movements and activisms, existing collections generally explore the “connections between gender and translation or women and translation” (p. 2). This essay collection suggests that the important role of translation in the trans/formation of feminist politics requires more analytical recognition. Hence, the authors put the “F word” back into the discussion in their chapters, focusing on the roles of translation in the development of feminisms.

The editors also claim that the recent Feminist Translation Studies (FTS) scholarship fails to reveal the current cross-cultural increased amount of attention given to feminist translation. They point out this gap “not only perpetuates the false impression that feminist translation is exclusively on and of the west, but also discourages further knowledge production on and of non-western realities by keeping new scholarship deterred or invisible” (p. 3). However, the book is still in English, and Europe and Anglo-America still take a large space in the collection. The very gap regarding FTS scholarship produced in non-hegemonic languages that they are criticizing remains a crucial one.

The essays collected in Olga Castro and Emek Ergun’s Feminist Translation Studies: Local and Transnational Perspectives seek both to address some major gaps in FTS and to inspire “the formation of new connections between translation studies, feminist theories, queer theory, linguistics, anthropology, postcolonial studies, history, philosophy, cultural studies, globalization studies, comparative literature and critical pedagogies” (p. 4). The essay collection is organized into three sections: Feminist Translation in Theory; Feminist Translation in Transition and Feminist Translation in Action. Theoretical frameworks in the feminist translation are the main focus in Section I, while case studies framed in different geohistorical contexts are detailed in Section III. The second section of this collection takes the form of a roundtable conversation that serves as a hinge and brings together seven leading scholars across disciplines as they discuss and share their opinions about what feminist politics of translation means to them.

As explained by the editors in the introduction, this collection is devoted to emphasizing the roles of translation in the making of the feminist transnational. They hope to re-envision “the future of the transnational as a polyphonic space where translation (as a feminist praxis) is embraced as a tool and model of cross-border dialogue, resistance, solidarity and activism in pursuit of justice and equality for all” (p. 1). In doing so, the editors argue for new, innovative feminist approaches to the study of translation in the era of transnational feminism.

The essays in Section I, “Feminist Translation in Theory”, propose inventive theoretical frameworks for feminist translation practice and study. José Santaemilia, in “A Corpus-Based Analysis of Terminology in Gender and Translation Research: The Case of Feminist Translation,” engages in a corpus analysis of the key terms used to define the field, focusing particularly on the usage and definition of “feminist translation” over the years. As Santaemilia put it, “in order to better understand where the field currently stands and is heading, we need a critical look at its key terms” (p. 6). The chapter presents an overview of the main concerns, debates, and current status of FTS in academia. In “Transnational Feminist Solidarities and the Ethics of Translation,” Damien Tissot draws on the philosophy of Paul Ricœur, Etienne Balibar, and Judith Butler. The author argues that, when conceived in translation, the universal can be a useful tool to achieve the project of politics and ethics of translation. Readers of this chapter will learn about what he calls “a feminist ethics of translation,” which sees translation as a way of “recognising and embracing the differences of the Other without fetishising them” (p. 6).

On the topic of English hegemony, María Reimóndez raises accusations that “an Anglo-Euro-centric epistemology is privileged over other kinds of knowledge” (p. 45), highlighting the shortcomings of the feminist translation praxis. The author proposes the notion of polyphony with references to Mikhail Bakhtin to argue that “the goal of feminist and postcolonial translation is to create a space for multiple voices to be heard” (p. 44). Similarly, Lola Sánchez, in her case study of the titles selected for publication in the Spanish book series Feminismos, reveals that while the presence of feminist knowledge/voices from other parts of the world is inexistent or scarce, most of the translated works are from countries with imperial powers (the US, the UK, France, Italy, and Germany).

Cornelia Möser, in “Gender Travelling across France, Germany and the US: The Feminist Gender Debates as Cultural Translations,” reconfigures translation “as a productive act of meaning-making … [that] undermines dichotomous gendered ideas about translation (when conceptualized as a copy, secondary and feminine), original (when conceptualized as authentic, primary and masculine) and nationality (that is conceptualized around claims of ‘authentic’ and ‘pure’)” (p. 80). The author analyzes the travels within feminist debates on “gender” in France, Germany and the US, exploring the productivity of translation. She also invokes scholars, such as Edward Said, Walter Benjamin, and Naoki Sakai, to emphasize the creative potential of translation for feminist knowledge production. The first section is concluded by Ergun and Castro’s chapter in which they present the theoretical framework behind their vision of feminist translation as a promising pedagogical tool and explain how it can be practised in different courses that aim to promote equality and help students appreciate differences.

The second section of the collection is a cross-disciplinary roundtable chapter where seven prominent feminist scholars—Richa Nagar, Kathy Davis, Judith Butler, AnaLouise Keating, Claudia de Lima Costa, Sonia E. Alvarez and Ay?e Gül Alt?nay—engage in a discussion about a variety of issues linked to the feminist politics of translation. This chapter demonstrates the rich epistemic potential of interdisciplinary studies and conversations on feminist translation. The participants explore the essential role of translation in the development and success of transnational feminist activism. As Butler states, “there can be no solidarity without translation, and certainly no global solidarity” (p. 113).

The book’s third section opens with Justine M. Pas and Magdalena J. Zaborowska’s essay, where the authors analyze the feminist translation strategies used in English translations of interviews conducted in Polish, Mandarin Chinese, Tamil, and Hindi for the Global Feminisms project (GFP), an oral history project initiated at the University of Michigan, the US. The chapter illustrates how GFP’s translational strategies help explain to the readers the complexity, diversity, and legitimacy of international feminisms. In the next chapter, Annarita Taronna studies Italian writer Joyce Lussu’s activist translations and her intersectional feminism. Taronna discusses how Lussu has challenged the prescriptive translation norms with her translation method. In Lussu’s translations, concerns of local and global equality and justice prevail over preoccupations with “faithful” linguistic transfer.

In “Donne è bello and the Role of Translation in the Migration of ‘Consciousness-Raising’ from the US to Italy,” Elena Basilio presents an analysis of “Un programma per le femministe: prender coscienza” which was published in Donne è bello—a 1972 volume comprising a selection of translated essays of US-American radical feminists by the Italian feminist collective “Anabasi”. This chapter underlines the important role played by translation and translators’ strategies in the diffusion of radical feminist practices from the US to Italy. Similarly, focusing on the cross-border travels of feminist theories, Sergi Mainer contextualizes the historical and geopolitical development of anarcha-feminism and translation from Germany to Spain.

Rebecca S. Robinson, in her essay, attempts to explore how movements, such as SlutWalk, translated into other receiving cultures by examining the Moroccan case. The author focuses particularly on the translation of its controversial use of “slut” in the title of their campaign. In doing so, this chapter proves the dialogic power of translation and that SlutWalk was transplanted in Morocco to trigger public debates about street harassment and related gender norms. In “The Translator and the Transgressive: Encountering Sexual Alterity in Catherine Millet’s La vie sexuelle de Catherine M.,” Pauline Henry-Tierney highlights the relevance of feminist translator. Henry-Tierney’s analysis explains the subjective transformative experiences of the feminist translator by employing theoretical concepts devised by thinkers such as Simone de Beauvoir and Judith Butler. In the final chapter, Serena Bassi examines the Italian localization of the US-based “It Gets Better” (IGB) campaign. The chapter offers practical lessons for students of translation to rethink translation as a form of activism to construct their own identities.

The essays in “Feminist Translation Studies: Local and Transnational Perspectives” set out to be a major contribution to the field of Feminist Translation Studies. The diversity of voices and visions expands the definition of feminist translation from the conventional framing to a more intersectional one. The information covered in this volume provides the student of translation studies some additional and welcome relief to feminist theories and practices, enlarging their focus of feminist politics beyond a gender-only agenda. The volume will no doubt be valuable to those relatively new to FTS, as it provides innovative models and insights that are vital in the study of translation in the era of transnational feminism. This collection of essays is indeed a useful reference book for FTS.

Reference

Castro, O., & Ergun, E. (2017). Feminist Translation Studies: Local and Transnational Perspectives. Routledge.

Author’s bio-note

John Chi Chon FONG obtained his B.A. in English Studies from the University of Macau where he worked as a Research Assistant over the summer. His research interests include feminist translation, gender and language.

Book Review: Affect, Narratives and Politics of Southeast Asian Migration by Carlos M. Piocos III

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Publisher: Routledge. Date of Publication: 2021. Language: English. ISBN: 9780367279165

Reviewed by

[wp-svg-icons icon=”user” wrap=”i”] Jose Kervin Cesar B. Calabias [wp-svg-icons icon=”envelop” wrap=”i”]

Department of Cultural Studies,  Lingnan University

Rupkatha Journal, Vol. 14, Issue 1, January-March, 2022, Pages 1–3. https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v14n1.19

Received: 27 April 2021 | Revised: 22 Oct 2021 | Accepted: 22 Oct 2021 | First Published: 05 February 2022

(This review is published under the Themed Issue Contemporary East and Southeast Asian Literary and Cultural Studies)
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Book Review: Affect, Narratives and Politics of Southeast Asian Migration by Carlos M. Piocos III

Carlos Piocos’s ground-breaking book, Affect, Narratives and Politics of Southeast Asian Migration published earlier this year by Routledge, provides an in-depth analysis of the intimate labour(ed) landscape of Filipina and Indonesian migrant workers in Hong Kong and Singapore, and how their (im)mobilities are not just hastened and aggravated by the neoliberal framework of global labor and the policies of their sending and receiving nation-states, but also in terms of the emotionality that circulates within the global care chains network. Piocos specifically turns our attention to the “felt” politics that emanate from films and fictions of and by Southeast Asian migrant workers and how these cultural productions create an affective economy that, according to him, is not just “sticky” as feminist critic Sarah Ahmed describes, but demonstrates varying viscosities of “thickening and thinning out,” reflecting a “messiness” of feelings that do not necessarily coalesce in these texts (p. 10).

The author tracts the unevenness of affect within the textual tropes of “belonging and displacement, shame and desire, vulnerability and victimization, and their sacrifices for their home and homeland” (p. 5) that are imbricated in the featured migrant print and visual media; Xyza Cruz Bacani’s photographs in her book, We are Like Air; the short stories of Indonesian migrant worker-writers, Susie Utomo, Erfa Handayani, Maria Bo Niok, Tiwi, Juwanna, Susana Nisa, Arista Devi, Indira Margareta and Etik Juwita; the novels Soledad’s Sister by Jose Dalisay and Sebongkah Tanah Retak (A Lump of Cracked Land) by Rida Fitria; the films Remittance by Patrick Daly and Joel Fendelman, Anthony Chen’s Ilo Ilo, Still Human by Oliver Chan Siu-Kuen, and from Filipino directors Mes de Guzman and Zig Madamba Dulay, Balikbayan Box and Bagahe, respectively; and migrant documentaries Mengusahakan Cinta (Effort for Love) by Ani Ema Susanti and Sunday Beauty Queen by Baby Ruth Villarama. These are structured into five chapters that illustrate the landscape and politics of migrant “feelings.” While each chapter focuses on a certain affect(s), these chapters “affect” each other by consciously aligning the discussions to connect structurally and emotionally. In this way, migrant feelings emanating from these cultural productions are not discrete emotional categories but are thickening and thinning out beyond the generic constraint and, by extension, permeating within the actual spaces and bodies of domestic migration in both countries. The analysis drawn across generic and formal considerations shows that “border crossing” among migrants does not just happen geographically but extends to the genres of migrant cultural production from which this “rhizomatic” quality merits equal attention. Piocos interfaces his close reading of these texts against the wider discourses impinging Southeast Asian migrant labour and how the affects teased out from these texts influence government “mood” and policy on domestic migration (such as in the featured opinions of Indonesian president Joko Widodo, former Philippine president Ninoy Aquino, and Hong Kong legislator, Regina Ip), reinforce or negate popular representations of migrant labourers, and ultimately show how the interiority of feelings can be harnessed to affect the on-going political movements and struggles of migrant workers in Singapore and Hong Kong. All these shows what Piocos argues as the migrant affective economy where these cultural productions and representations or “viral texts” (p. 156) are reiterated, reproduced, consumed, and/or repudiated by Filipina and Indonesian migrant labourers alongside the precarious narratives and politics of their supposed national heroism as bagong bayani or pahlawan devisa. From alienation and belonging discussed in the first chapter down to grief and/in anger, the book shows not just a spectrum of emotions and feelings, but the journey of migrant political identification that ends in the hopeful note of resistance borne by the on-going transnational migrant labour rights movement shaped and buoyed by an array of migrant affect, proving how “literary and visual texts can take on the political task of affecting a social movement” (Piocos, 2021, p. 167). In this way, Piocos highlights agency in the immobility of migrants by showing how these women subvert their precarious conditions through movement itself.

Overall, the strength of this book is not just how it pioneers the affective turn within migration and migrant studies that are classed, gendered, and racialized in predominant scholarly analyses and activisms, but how Piocos steers this intersection to account for the “thickening of emotionality” as migrant remittances accrue in nation-states whose coffers are bellied by their suffering. Begging the question, how do we turn suffering into empowerment? And while it sounds unfortunate that migrants need to be subordinated to come into the agency, this paradoxical, albeit violent, relationship is precisely what makes emotions, feelings, and subjectivities complex and therefore cannot be decoupled from the migrant subject formation. Non-representational theories such as affect and how Piocos highlights how cultural productions are “aesthetic mediations and political interventions” (p. 6) show how upward social mobility and/or migrant political struggle require fluid motions of emotional negotiations found in the interstices of being accepted in the home/host country against knowing one’s “place,” being allowed certain intimacies while wholeheartedly accepting exclusion, and accepting sacrifice as a necessary catalyst for radical change, all illustrated by the fictions and films featured in this book. Ultimately, this shows how emotionality and the viscosity from which it moves migrants are not just ambivalent, dichotomized, or even dialectically opposing but are contronymic, which is to say how these presumably subordinated, negative feelings of alienation, sexual othering, and sacrificial motherhood are understood to be the necessary affective drives to claim or arrive at positive migrant agency.

However, while there remains so much more to say about what this book can potentially “affect” in terms of migrant scholarship, it has ironically shown a minor shortcoming in what it has chosen to privilege. The cultural productions of fiction and film featured by Piocos in this book leave out the dynamism of the everydayness of lived “emotionality.” And there are clear opportunities from which this book could have benefitted from the equally “thick” description from ethnographic data such as the author mentioning his engagement with his network of Filipina and Indonesian domestics in his “Sunday group” from his stay in Hong Kong from 2012-2016 (p. 156) that informed much of his own “feelings” and textual analyses. It would have been equally fascinating if the researcher’s own ethnographic notes from this immersion or certain interviews conducted by him with these migrants as both subject and creator of these featured texts would have been included in the shaping of affect. While this book’s success can also be attributed to its material density where Piocos has analyzed 19 “texts” in total, the potential to further the affective through ethnographic detail remains. Arguably, emotions are made to be “trackable” within the curated frames and borders of these films and fictions, revealing how emotions can sometimes be predicated on or affected by the prevailing standard, rules, and/or conventions of a given genre, and this leaves the readers wanting to know more how they can observe and/or apprehend migrant emotions as actual lived experiences, vocabularies, and gestures in the field.

Perhaps the book’s possibilities can be an opportunity for scholars of varying levels of academic career to use this book not just as an illuminating introduction to Southeast Asian migration, affect theory, and emergent migrant fiction and film but as a field guide in ethnographic studies as well. As I write this review, I am also immersed in my own ethnographic work among Filipina migrant workers in Hong Kong and I can see how this book opens the possibility of tracking and apprehending these felt politics as gestures, discourses, and emotions that unfold and circulate in the field. This book also engages with critical ethnographic concerns such as adapting a certain sensitivity in decoupling our interlocutors from their perceived subordinate status and disengaging ourselves from the paternalistic intentions of well-meaning research for and about Southeast Asian migrants, and where the book’s resounding recognition of hope in migrant political movements can help ethnographic researches document a more nuanced migrant agency.

Reference

Piocos, C. M. (2021). Affect, narratives and politics of Southeast Asian migration. Routledge.

Jose Kervin Cesar B. Calabias is an Igorot Kankana-ey scholar from Baguio City, Philippines. He holds a BA and MA in Language and Literature from the University of the Philippines, and he is currently a PhD candidate of the Department of Cultural Studies at Lingnan University in Hong Kong where he is a recipient of the Hong Kong PhD Fellowship Scheme and the Belt and Road Scholarship awards. Before commencing his fellowship, he taught courses on literature and arts at De La Salle University in Manila, Philippines.

Spatial Imaginings in the Age of Colonial Cartographic Reason: Maps, Landscapes, Travelogues in Britain and India by Nilanjana Mukherjee

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London and New York: Routledge, 2021, xiii+300 pp., $160.00 (hardbound), ISBN 9780367749583

Sutapa Dutta

Gargi College, University of Delhi. Email:  sdutta.eng@gmail.com

Volume 13, Number 4, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n4.25

Nilanjana Mukherjee’s book looks at construction of space, leading from imaginative to concrete contours, within the context of the British imperial enterprise in India. Fundamental to her argument is that colonial definitions of sovereignty were defined in terms of control over space and not just over people, and hence it was first necessary to map the space and inscribe symbols into it. In the latter half of the eighteenth century, imperialism and colonization were complex phenomena that involved new and imminent strategies of nation building. No other period of British history, as Linda Colley has noted, has seen such a conscious attempt to construct a national state and national identity (Colley 1992). Although the physical occupation of India by the British East India Company could be said to have begun with the battle of Plassey (1757), nevertheless the process of conquest through mediation of symbolic forms indicate the time and manner in which the ‘conquest’ was conscripted. Full-Text PDF>>

The Nineteenth Century Revis(it)ed: The New Historical Fiction by Ina Bergmann

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New York: Routledge.  2021. ISBN: 978-0-367-63466-7 (hbk), 978-1-003-12807-6 (ebk)

Prashant Maurya

Senior Research Fellow, Department of Humanities & Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, India – 247667. Email: prashantlinguistics@gmail.com

Volume 13, Number 4, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n4.24

The nineteenth century is a crucial phase in America’s history. Key features such as geographical expansions, the industrial revolution, development in science and technology, and America’s emergence as a super power, after the American Revolution and the War of 1812, mark the century. The Civil War becomes the most important historical event of this phase that will impact the lives of Americans in the years to come. The century has literary importance also because, during this phase, forerunners of American literature, like, Edgar Allen Poe, James Cooper, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, etc., come to the scene. Thus, the century as the setting has always been a literary choice for historical novelists.  Full-Text PDF>>

Writing and Space: Writing the City by Stuti Khanna

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Orient Blackswan. 2020. pp.114, Rs. 750 (Paperback). ISBN: 9789352879229

Urvashi Kaushal

Assistant Professor, SVNIT, Surat, Gujarat. ORCID ID: 0000-0002-6774-6849. Email: k.urvashi@amhd.svnit.ac.in

Volume 13, Number 4, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n4.23

Writing the City, a collection of essays edited by Stuti Khanna is a noteworthy publication as it includes 13 engaging essays by critically acclaimed contemporary mostly Indian writer. The book has an attractive cover with an infographic map of cities — the theme around which Khanna assembles this collection. This book with only 114 pages can be a treasure trove for researchers of the contemporary Indian writing as “it explores the symbiotic relationship between form and content” (Khanna, 2020, p. xi) as each of these 13 writers present in their introspective mood, “the relationship of their writing to place and space” (Khanna, 2020, p.xi) of their upbringing. Hence, the apt title, Writing the City. The book validates Tim Creswell and other Humanist Geographer’s reverberations that: “Place is the raw material for the creative production for identity” (Cresswell, 2004, p.39). Full-Text PDF>>

An Introduction to Indian Aesthetics: History, Theory, and Theoreticians by Mini Chandran and Sreenath V. S.

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Bloomsbury India. 2021. pp. 2308, £76.50 / ISBN: 9789389165135

Prabha Shankar Dwivedi

Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Tirupati. Email: prabhas.dwivedi@iittp.ac.in

Volume 13, Number 4, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n4.21

This book can be seen as a response to a severe demand in the field of Indian poetics for an introductory book that provides an overview of all the seminal schools of Indian poetical thoughts, keeping in view both the theories and the theoreticians. This book, in the words of authors, is meant to be “An introduction to the world of Sanskrit poetics, explaining its major concepts lucidly for even those who do not know Sanskrit. It offers a comprehensive historical and conceptual overview of all the major schools in Sanskrit poetics…. It is meant to be a beginners’ guide to the awe-inspiring immensity of Sanskrit literature and literary thought, the first step in a journey that should ideally lead to the profundities of ancient thought.” (Chandran et al 2021, p. xii). The discussion in the book progresses with varied theoretical perspectives on Indian aesthetics in a well laid historico-conceptual order. Though the book briefly talks about Tamil poetics putting it parallel to Sanskrit poetics by comparing Tolk?ppiyam with N??ya??stra in the preface, it primarily serves to be an introductory handbook of Sanskrit poetics for the non-Sanskrit University students at various levels. This book succeeds in providing clearer idea of Indian poetical thoughts to its readers. Full-Text PDF>>

Review Article: Dalit Literature and Criticism by Raj Kumar

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Publisher: Orient BlackSwan
Year of Publication: 2019
ISBN:978-93-5287-532-0

Reviewed by
Dr. Shahida
Assistant Professor, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, NIT Kurukshetra. Email: shahida2709@gmail.com

 Volume 12, Number 6, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n6.27r

Extract

The term ‘Dalit’ refers to a particular group or community in India which have been ostracized, exploited and humiliated due caste structure and social order ardently followed in India. The etymology of the word ‘Dalit’ can be traced to the root word dal in Sanskrit and dalan in Hindi meaning ‘broken down’ or ‘broken to pieces.’ It is believed that Jotibarao Phule (1826-90) first used the term to describe condition of outcastes and untouchables in India. Later, the term was popularized by B.R. Ambedkar as he used it profusely in his speeches and writings in Marathi. The term gained new meaning in 1970s, a period of literary and cultural boom that witnessed the birth of Dalit literature and in the present, the term refers to belated recognition of the Dalit’s militant claims upon a history of humiliation and suffering (Rao, 11).

Since its origin Dalit Literature has emerged as a form of social resistance literature principally aimed at community identity formation and bringing about political and economic changes among the Dalit population. Arjun Dangle, the Marathi Dalit writer, editor and activist suggests, “Dalit literature is marked by revolt and negativism, since it is closely associated with the hopes for freedom by a group of people, who as untouchables, are victims of social, economic and cultural inequality” (Trans. Mukhherjee; 1). Dangle traces the origin of Dalit literature to Ambedkar. It was his revolutionary ideas that encouraged Dalits to speak for themselves and therefore Dalit literature is an expression of this self- awareness; an assertion for a dignified life.

Review Article on A Fragmented Feminism: The Life and Letters of Anandibai Joshee By Meera Kosambi, Ram Ramaswamy, Madhavi Kolhatkar & Aban Mukherji

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ISBN 9780367463892

Published August 29, 2019 by Routledge India

280 Pages 33 B/W Illustrations

Reviewed by

Niranjana G1 & Bhuvaneswari2

1Research Scholar, VIT Chennai.  Email: niranjjan87@gmail.com

2Assistant Professor, VIT Chennai

 Volume 12, Number 6, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n6.26r

 [Updated on October 27, 2021]

‘A Fragmented Feminism THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF ANANDIBAI JOSHEE’ is the seminal work on social history about the first woman doctor of India, Anandibai Gopal Joshee written by the sociologist Meera Kosambi and Edited by Ram Ramaswamy, Madhavi Kolhatkar and Aban Mukherji. It provides insight into the psychosocial impacts of culture on Indian women through the life of Dr. Anandibai Gopal Joshee, India’s first women doctor.

The author collected the letters written by Anandibai, newspaper reports on her, her poems in Marathi and rare photographs of her to craft the biography of her life. This book resembles an epistolary style in its narrative quality accompanied by annotations and explanations by the author and Editors. Anandibai, who was graduated in western medicine at America, lived during the nineteenth century pre-independence India where access to basic education was a distant dream. This book stands as a witness to practices of child marriage, physical and emotional abusement on women. (Kosambi, 19)

‘In childhood the mind is immature and the body undeveloped. And you know how I acted on these occasions. If I had left, you at that immature age, as you kept on suggesting, what would have happened? (And any number of girls have left their homes because of harassment from mothers-in-law and husbands). I did not do so because I was afraid that my ill-considered behaviour would tarnish my father’s honour… And I requested you not to spare me, but to kill me. In out society, for centuries there has been no legal barrier between husband and wives; and if it exists, it works against women! Such being the vase, I had no recourse but to allow you to hit me with chairs and bear it with equanimity. A Hindu woman has not right to utter a word or to advise her husband. On the contrary she has right to allow her husband to do what he wishes and to keep quiet.’

The setting sprawls in a landscape where the women identified themselves as the Other of Men and fully dependent on Men for their existence. Despite the continuous harassment and physical abusement, Anandibai successfully achieved her dream of becoming a doctor. This book is a foreword to Indian feminist movement.

The first part of the book is concerned with early life of Anandibai, her American connection, and life at Calcutta and Serampore. The earlier works on Anandi Bai Joshee portrays her husband as a great reformer and camouflaged the hegemonical practices underplay, all the while defending the patriarchal politics in representing Anandibai in the world stage, but this book underscores the politics behind her representation and questions the legitimization process through which Anandibai is represented.

Pre-pubertal Marriages (child marriage) were predominant during that time consequently, infant mortality rate was also high which affected the gynaecological health of women. This book delineates the effect of child marriage and rigorous religious customs of Hindus Brahmanical society on women. Although, the access to basic education was a great deal for women those days except for the missionary schools, Anandibai finished her basic education in language and arts without proper schooling. The author and Editors greatly emphasize the emergence of the New World and its offerings to civilize the otherwise uncivilized third world countries of the world in Anandibai’s correspondences with Mrs.Carpernter.

The second part of the book deals with her passage to America, stay at Carpenters, health issues and struggles at completing her medical graduation. Multiple offers from reputed universities is a great preamble for recognition of Indian women’s talent and potential in the world stage. The growing and fragmented consciousness of Anandibai is evident in her letters as internal conflicts between Hindu and American way of life and from the disagreements with her husband. This book acts as an interface to the inner self of a woman who was contesting the equations of culture and education. (Kosambi, 173)

‘I feel grieved at your habit of misinterpreting things. I did not at all mean to, even wish to, say that you treat me badly. I have only written about the excessive criticism Govindaro made of my having forgotten Marathi.’

The third part of the book talks about her brief voyage back to India and humiliations in the ship, which is the surviving proof for imperialistic monstrosities on Indian people. The author and editors substantiated Anandibai’s letters with the reports from the acclaimed newspapers “The Mahratta” and “The Kesari” about her life.

Early marriage and pregnancy, fasting and poor eating habits crushed her dreams of serving the country and emancipate fellow women. She drearily performed the role of gender and religion-imposed duties in the name of cultural codes. The culture, which was supposed to emancipate and legitimise, hampered her growth by naturalize and represent her as Indian women. There are accounts of life of Pandita Ramabai in the book, who was projected as a foil to Anandibai in the media during that time.

This book is the testimony for child marriage, child abusement, woman abusement, and subjugation in the name of religious practices and colonial violence. The entire nation was under subjugation, but women were dually subjugated under the colonial powers and Patriarchy. Anandibai’s life is the metaphor for evils of Indian society on women. The influence of culture, patriarchal practices, and Indian code of conduct over Anandibai is clearly captured in her own words of correspondence.

The Editors tried to chronologically arrange the letters to better project the life of Anandibai but could not accomplish it. Even though, there are narrative interferences with letters and anecdotes from Anandibai’s friends, the story is not lost in its entirety. The title, ‘Fragmented Feminism’ aptly denotes the fractured feminist consciousness in Anandibai, and the cultural factors obstructed her road to realisation. This revival of interest in re-publishing the life of Anandibai through her own words inspires all the Indian women seeking agency in social, domestic, economical, and political spheres.

References:

Kosambi, Meera. ‘A Fragmented Feminism THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF ANANDIBAI JOSHEE’. Edited by Ram Ramaswamy, Madhavi Kolhatkar and Aban Mukherji. Routledge, 29 August 2019.

Butler, Judith, “Gender Trouble.” Routledge Classics, 2016.

Chakravarti, Uma. ‘Gendering Caste: Through a Feminist Lens.’ SAGE Publications Pvt. Ltd, 15 October 2018.

John, E, Mary. ‘Women’s studies in India: A Reader.’ Penguin India 25 August 2008.

Review Article: The Crises of Civilization: Exploring Global and Planetary Histories (2018) by Dipesh Chakrabarty

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Publisher: Oxford University Press (2018). Language: English

ISBN-13 (print edition): 978-0-19-948673-1. ISBN-10 (print edition): 0-19-948673-5

Reviewed by

Shikha Vats

Doctoral Fellow and Teaching Assistant, Department of Humanities & Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology – Delhi. Email: shikhavats.iitd@gmail.com

 Volume 12, Number 4, July-September, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n4.25

W. E. B. Du Bois (1903) had famously said that the problem of the twentieth century “is the problem of the color-line” (p. 13). Dipesh Chakrabarty declares, in this new volume, that the question of the twenty-first century will be that of climate crisis. The major events of the twentieth century, including the processes of imperialism, colonization, and globalization led to widespread migration of people all across the globe framing new intersubjective equations such as oppressor-oppressed, privileged-marginalized, mostly along what Du Bois called ‘the color-line’. The major fallout of this colonial and capitalist project in the last century has been global warming which is set to affect the entire planet and hence needs to be at the forefront of all policy decisions in the twenty-first century. In order to grapple with this new age of the Anthropocene, whereby human beings have become a geophysical force capable of altering the course of the planet, Chakrabarty urges a rethinking and reformulation of the discipline of history…Full Text PDF

Book Review: Interpreting Cinema: Adaptations, Intertextualities, Art Movements by Jasbir Jain

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Reviewed by

Somdatta Mandal

Former Professor of English, Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan, W.B. Email: somdattam@gmail.com

 Volume 12, Number 4, July-September, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n4.24

Film studies now has become a full-fledged discipline with several theoretical approaches lined up behind it and has a strong foothold in serious academics. Films are now read from various perspectives as text, as a serious novel is read over and over again, since every successive reading/viewing yields additional insights into their meaning. Interpreting Cinema: Adaptations, Intertextualities, Art Movements by eminent academician and scholar Jasbir Jain is a collection of sixteen essays which explores the academic aspect of film studies and has a wide range of primarily Hindi films for discussion crossing decades, genres and cultures. The essays in this volume take up adaptations from fiction and drama both from within the same culture and across cultures and explore the relationships between cultures and mediums. There are individual essays on relationships, theoretical frameworks and art movements, reflecting the intimate connection between critical theory and filmmaking…Full Text PDF

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