Afiya S. Zia, Faith and Feminism in Pakistan: Religious Agency or Secular Autonomy? (Lahore: Foli... more Afiya S. Zia, Faith and Feminism in Pakistan: Religious Agency or Secular Autonomy? (Lahore: Folio Books, 2019), 250 pp. $31.34 (paperback). ISBN: 978-969-7834-00-6.
The Problem Without a Name: Comments on Cultural Difference (Racism) in India, 2019
This paper is about race and race relations in India with a focus on the experiences of violence ... more This paper is about race and race relations in India with a focus on the experiences of violence and discrimination that people from India’s Northeast face in mainland India. This has become a ‘problem without a name’, generally articulated as a problem of cultural difference. The paper argues that the emphasis on cultural difference elides the issue of racism faced by India’s north-eastern subjects, whereby culture is a mere substitute for race. Institutional approaches to racism tend to rely on a biological understanding of race. The paper demonstrates the racial formation of the category ‘north-eastern’ through the processes of colonialism, nationalism and counter-insurgency. This approach shows the ways in which racism, classism and sexism work together in constituting the racialised, gendered and classed north-eastern subject.
On 15 July 2004, a public protest was staged in the state of Manipur, in India’s Northeast, to op... more On 15 July 2004, a public protest was staged in the state of Manipur, in India’s Northeast, to oppose the rape and custodial killing of a young Meitei woman, Thangjam Manorama, by soldiers of a counter-insurgency paramilitary battalion, the Assam Rifles, who suspected she was a militant. At this protest, several women appeared nude, holding a banner that read ‘Indian army rape us’. This analysis considers how we might read the nudity and the statement ‘Indian army rape us’. I argue that the language of law, human rights and women’s rights as human rights, are inadequate to analyze the protest and the events surrounding it because they do not situate the protest within larger political struggles in the Northeast. Further, such universalist approaches take categories like ‘Indian citizen’, ‘woman’ and ‘tribal’ as a given and do not allow for an engagement with how these categories are mutually constituted, or the law’s complicity in their constitution. Accordingly, concerns about contested notions of citizenship that are at the heart of the Manipur protest cannot be adequately addressed within this framework. Instead, I suggest a postcolonial feminist analytics as an alternative means to engage with the political questions raised by the protest.
This essay focuses on the issues of voice and representation, especially of people at the margins... more This essay focuses on the issues of voice and representation, especially of people at the margins of the postcolonial nation-state. I ask what happens to political conversation and dialogue in situations of foundational inequality between two speaking positions, where the inequality has been engendered by the way in which the epistemic and political category of the nation-state has emerged. I place this discussion in the context of India’s Northeast, which has seen a history of failed political conversations. These issues of representation and voice resonate with larger debates within postcolonial and transnational studies.
Displacement and Citizenship: Histories and Memories of Exclusion , 2020
Displacement and Citizenship: Histories and Memories of Exclusion intends to capture the crises o... more Displacement and Citizenship: Histories and Memories of Exclusion intends to capture the crises of forced migration, internal displacement due to conflict situations and development-induced migration. The essays in this volume record the experiences of societies in South Asia (India, Bangladesh), Latin America (Peru), Europe (Germany, Austria) and Africa (Reunion Island, Namibia, Rwanda), each of which has histories marked by large-scale displacement caused by colonial policies of land capture, slavery or indentured labour, or partitions and other exclusions in the very birth of the nation-state. The essays are more than mere cautionary tales. They articulate how the denial of 'belonging' leaves a mark not only on individuals, but also on the nation that excludes, as well as the implications it has for citizens' access to rights and the solidarity of fellow-citizens.
Afiya S. Zia, Faith and Feminism in Pakistan: Religious Agency or Secular Autonomy? (Lahore: Foli... more Afiya S. Zia, Faith and Feminism in Pakistan: Religious Agency or Secular Autonomy? (Lahore: Folio Books, 2019), 250 pp. $31.34 (paperback). ISBN: 978-969-7834-00-6.
The Problem Without a Name: Comments on Cultural Difference (Racism) in India, 2019
This paper is about race and race relations in India with a focus on the experiences of violence ... more This paper is about race and race relations in India with a focus on the experiences of violence and discrimination that people from India’s Northeast face in mainland India. This has become a ‘problem without a name’, generally articulated as a problem of cultural difference. The paper argues that the emphasis on cultural difference elides the issue of racism faced by India’s north-eastern subjects, whereby culture is a mere substitute for race. Institutional approaches to racism tend to rely on a biological understanding of race. The paper demonstrates the racial formation of the category ‘north-eastern’ through the processes of colonialism, nationalism and counter-insurgency. This approach shows the ways in which racism, classism and sexism work together in constituting the racialised, gendered and classed north-eastern subject.
On 15 July 2004, a public protest was staged in the state of Manipur, in India’s Northeast, to op... more On 15 July 2004, a public protest was staged in the state of Manipur, in India’s Northeast, to oppose the rape and custodial killing of a young Meitei woman, Thangjam Manorama, by soldiers of a counter-insurgency paramilitary battalion, the Assam Rifles, who suspected she was a militant. At this protest, several women appeared nude, holding a banner that read ‘Indian army rape us’. This analysis considers how we might read the nudity and the statement ‘Indian army rape us’. I argue that the language of law, human rights and women’s rights as human rights, are inadequate to analyze the protest and the events surrounding it because they do not situate the protest within larger political struggles in the Northeast. Further, such universalist approaches take categories like ‘Indian citizen’, ‘woman’ and ‘tribal’ as a given and do not allow for an engagement with how these categories are mutually constituted, or the law’s complicity in their constitution. Accordingly, concerns about contested notions of citizenship that are at the heart of the Manipur protest cannot be adequately addressed within this framework. Instead, I suggest a postcolonial feminist analytics as an alternative means to engage with the political questions raised by the protest.
This essay focuses on the issues of voice and representation, especially of people at the margins... more This essay focuses on the issues of voice and representation, especially of people at the margins of the postcolonial nation-state. I ask what happens to political conversation and dialogue in situations of foundational inequality between two speaking positions, where the inequality has been engendered by the way in which the epistemic and political category of the nation-state has emerged. I place this discussion in the context of India’s Northeast, which has seen a history of failed political conversations. These issues of representation and voice resonate with larger debates within postcolonial and transnational studies.
Displacement and Citizenship: Histories and Memories of Exclusion , 2020
Displacement and Citizenship: Histories and Memories of Exclusion intends to capture the crises o... more Displacement and Citizenship: Histories and Memories of Exclusion intends to capture the crises of forced migration, internal displacement due to conflict situations and development-induced migration. The essays in this volume record the experiences of societies in South Asia (India, Bangladesh), Latin America (Peru), Europe (Germany, Austria) and Africa (Reunion Island, Namibia, Rwanda), each of which has histories marked by large-scale displacement caused by colonial policies of land capture, slavery or indentured labour, or partitions and other exclusions in the very birth of the nation-state. The essays are more than mere cautionary tales. They articulate how the denial of 'belonging' leaves a mark not only on individuals, but also on the nation that excludes, as well as the implications it has for citizens' access to rights and the solidarity of fellow-citizens.
Uploads
Papers by Papori Bora
Books by Papori Bora