Oppositional Imaginations: Multiple Lineages of Feminist Scholarship

Feminist scholars have been forthright in their criticism of mainstream academia but have rarely been so forthright in evaluating tendencies manifested within what I would like to call the “women’s studies movement.” Having worked for more than three decades in a women’s college which has the unique distinction of having produced a whole generation of feminists in Delhi, often through activism within the college itself, and watched scores of struggles within the campus on women’s issues, I am convinced that the institutional framework of women’s studies centers can be both enabling and disabling depending on the particular configuration of forces operating in universities. The institutional set-up of women’s studies centers is not necessarily supportive of feminist scholarship, and may actually be obstructive to transforming the universities into spaces for women’s activism and feminist analyses. It is regrettable, but true, that women’s studies centers have functioned within the framework of mainstream patriarchal academia and have reproduced the imbalances of power operating in universities. Feminist scholars have thus, more often than not, worked outside institutional fora, or sought alternative fora, of which fortunately there are many in a university like Delhi’s, especially because of the vibrancy of its women’s colleges; alternatively they have worked as independent scholars, outside institutional affiliation or special funding of any kind.