CULTURAL STUDIES CHALLENGE ABOUT HISTORY

What Does Cultural Studies Challenge About History

What Does Cultural Studies Challenge About History

Introduction

This essay examines a moment of institutionalization in cultural studies? and argues that questions of gender have a significant place in this interdisciplinary domain. The issue is discussed in a pedagogic context that has almost normalized feminism? seeing its political contributions as belonging to the past. The essay argues that the conceptual conjuncture of culture and gender which has been central to feminist theorizing in India needs to be rethought. This conjuncture arose from thinking about culture in the framework of nationalism and the anti-colonial struggle? and the alignment of women with national culture. It discuss briefly the trajectory of how we have gone about investigating the culture-gender conjuncture? present a reformulation of what We are up against? and introduce some new research projects which are trying to take this on board. The focus in these projects is on the question of translation? and how the issue of 'regional' languages poses a challenge to prevalent ideas in the women's movement and in feminist teaching. The larger proposition is that we need to formulate curricula based on new kinds of research if we are to take feminism into the cultural studies classroom of the future. With reference to gender, this paper discusses what culturul studies challenges about history.

Discussion

Generation of scholars has been practising cultural studies? sometimes by other names? but now we inhabit the moment of institutionalization? and have to teach cultural studies in formal settings that will ensure the official certification of students and researchers. If pedagogy is a significant new site for the articulation of the praxis of this interdisciplinary domain? we have to work out the modalities by which we can 'curricularize' what we have been working on.

The paper revisits a conceptual conjuncture - that of culture and gender - that has been central to feminist theorizing in India. The women's movement has engaged in various ways with the questions arising out of this conjuncture? whether it was in dealing with issues such as the Miss World Beauty Contest 1994 or the legal debate around the Uniform Civil Code in the mid-1990s or the 1998 controversy around the film Fire. An earlier instance of such engagement was the sati debate in the 1980s. Feminist scholarship? especially in literary studies and history? has discussed the formation of the female subject in India over the last century and a half? and elaborated how notions of normative femininity and masculinity were set in place. The challenge is most sharply visible in the space of pedagogy? where newer generations of women and men who do not necessarily acknowledge inheriting the struggles of the past are encountering the politics and the concepts generated by feminism. It will touch briefly on the trajectory of how we have gone about investigating the culture-gender conjuncture? present a reformulation of what We are up against? and discuss some new research projects that are trying to take this on ...