In Changing the Subject Srila Roy maps the rapidly transforming terrain of gender and sexual politics in India under conditions of global neoliberalism. The consequences of India’s liberalization were paradoxical: the influx of global funds for social development and NGOs signalled the co-option and depoliticization of struggles for women’s rights, even as they amplified the visibility and vitalization of queer activism. Roy reveals the specificity of activist and NGO work around issues of gender and sexuality through a decade-long ethnography of two West Bengal organizations, one working on lesbian, bisexual, and transgender issues and the other on rural women’s empowerment. Tracing changes in feminist governmentality that were entangled in transnational neoliberalism, Roy shows how historical and highly local feminist currents shaped contemporary queer and non-queer neoliberal feminisms. The interplay between historic techniques of activist governance and queer feminist governmentality’s focus on changing the self offers a new way of knowing feminism—both as always already co-opted and as a transformative force in the world.
Abbreviations ix
Preface: We, Feminists xi
Acknowledgments xvii
Introduction. Changing the Subject of Indian Feminism 1
1. Indian Feminism in the New Millennium: Co-optation, Entanglement, Intersection 26
2. Queer Activism as Governmentality: Regulating Lesbians, Making Queer 47
3. Queer Self-Fashioning: In, out of, and beyond the Closet 77
4. Feminist Governmentality: Entangled Histories and Empowered Women 101
5. Subaltern Self-Government: Precarious Transformations 132
Conclusion. On Critique and Care 160
Notes 177
References 217
Index
