From recovery to consolidation : Indian feminist publishing, 1984-Present

Abstract

Since the first Indian feminist press, Kali for Women, was established in 1984, Indian feminist publishing has developed from being primarily a mouthpiece for feminist activism to being a small but significant part of the broader Indian publishing industry. Feminist publishing continues to embody activism, but in the last thirty years it has also made a notable contribution to literary, scholarly and other areas of feminist discourse and book production. This thesis explores the diversity of topics and types of books that Indian feminist publishers, formal and informal, have produced since 1984, and what these suggest about contemporary Indian feminism. Indian feminist publishing began with a strong focus on recovering women's literary voices from obscurity, censorship and neglect. As the success of this project became evident, with the publication of much more women's fiction and non-fiction in India, the priority shifted from recovery to consolidation of feminist achievements in literary, scholarly and activist fields. The topics addressed in this thesis are the most prominent, or the most influential, that Indian feminist publishers have covered: recovery of women's literature, translation, censorship, caste, political and communal conflict, globalisation, development, environmental degradation, indigeneity, the sexual subaltern. No single, unified feminist perspective can be seen on any of these topics, suggesting Indian feminism's, and by extension Indian feminist publishing's, plurality and openness to encompassing multiple positions. As I demonstrate in the thesis, this industry can by no means be circumscribed within a conventional "third world" view of progressive movements. The range of published works, rather, represent the numerous ways in which Indian feminism questions and challenges dominant modes of thinking and writing about issues that affect women's lives both in the Indian subcontinent and globally. Feminist publishing studies do not fit easily under either feminist cultural studies or feminist literary studies. The field is considered too "literary" for the former and too commercially oriented for the latter. In this thesis I approach Indian feminist publishing from both of these disciplinary perspectives. No other book-length study has been undertaken on Indian feminist publishing, making this study an original contribution to Indian feminist and literary studies.