A Dissent Study on Gender Studies in India

Studying the difference between sex and gender, Nivedita Menon a feminist critic argues, “The initial move was to use the term sex to refer to the biological differences between men and women, while gender indicated the vast range of cultural meanings attached to that basic difference.” Further she states that this kind of distinction is important for feminism to mark because the subordination of women had been fundamentally justified on the grounds of the biological differences between men and women. So it is understood that the sex and gender distinction has been further developed into feminist theory.

There is also a debate whether feminism is a theory or a critical practice. Roman Seldom Peter, Widow Son and Peter Brooker have of the opinion, “Indeed, some feminists have not wished to embrace theory at all, precisely because, in academic institutions theory is male.”

Marry Eagleton, a prominent feminist critic argues that, “A suspicion of theory…throughout feminism’, because of its tendency to reinforce the hierarchical binary opposition between an ‘impersonal’, ‘disinterested’, ‘objective’, ‘public’, ‘male’ theory, and a ‘personal’, ‘subjective’, ‘private’, ‘female’ experience.”

In this context, Feminism, as theory and practice, means contradiction, interchange, debate based on a series of creative oppositions, of critiques and counter–critiques. It also means challenging, subverting and expending not only other (male) theories but its own positions and agenda.

John Mc Leed in his polemical book Beginning Post Colonialism (2007) opines that both feminism and postcolonialism share the mutual goal of challenging forms of oppression. He further studies feminism has to be studied in three phases:

The ‘First World’ refe...

... middle of paper ...

...w and ‘Dalit Gender Writings’ as a discipline is the result.

Works Cited

Nivedita Menon, “Political Theory,” 71.

Raman Seldon (ed.), A Render’s Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory, New Delhi: Pearson, 2007, 126.

Mary Eagleton (ed), Feminist Literary Theory: A Reader, Oxford: Blackwell, 1995.

Raman Seldon (ed.), A Reader’s Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory, New Delhi: Pearson, 2007, 127.

John McLeod, Beginning Postcolonialism, New Delhi: Viva, 2007, 174.

Peter Barry, Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory, New Delhi, Viva, 2008, 123.

Raman Seldon (ed.), A Render’s Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory, New Delhi: Pearson, 2007, 130.

Maitraye Chaudhuri (ed.), Feminism in India: Issues in Contemporary Indian Feminism, New Delhi: Kali for Women, 2004, 4.

Maitraye Chaudhuri (ed.), 6.

Maitraye Chaudhuri (ed.), 44.