Dalit Feminist Theory: A Reader - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 036727681X ISBN 13: 9780367276812

Publisher: Routledge India, 2019

Synopsis

Dalit Feminist Theory: A Reader radically redefines feminism by introducing the category of Dalit into the core of feminist thought. It supplements feminism by adding caste to its study and praxis; it also re-examines and rethinks Indian feminism by replacing it with a new paradigm, namely, that caste-based feminist inquiry offers the only theoretical vantage point for comprehensively addressing gender-based injustices.

Drawing on a variety of disciplines, the chapters in the volume discuss key themes such as Indian feminism versus Dalit feminism; the emerging concept of Dalit patriarchy; the predecessors of Dalit feminism, such as Phule and Ambedkar; the meaning and value of lived experience; the concept of Difference; the analogical relationship between Black feminism and Dalit feminism; the intersectionality debate; and the theory-versus-experience debate. They also provide a conceptual, historical, empirical and philosophical understanding of feminism in India today.

Accessible, essential and ingenious in its approach, this book is for students, teachers and specialist scholars, as well as activists and the interested general reader. It will be indispensable for those engaged in gender studies, women’s studies, sociology of caste, political science and political theory, philosophy and feminism, Ambedkar studies, and for anyone working in the areas of caste, class or gender-based discrimination, exclusion and inequality.

About this title

About the Author

Sunaina Arya is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Philosophy, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. She is completing a dissertation on feminist philosophy from a Dalit perspective. Her areas of research include Ambedkarite social and political philosophy, philosophy and psychology, and the philosophy of social sciences. She received an Honourable Mention in the Blue Stone Rising Star Prize 2019 announced by Brandeis University, USA.

Aakash Singh Rathore is a Fellow of the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, and an International Fellow of the Centre for Ethics and Global Politics-LUISS, Rome, Italy. He has taught at Jawaharlal Nehru University and other universities, including Delhi, Toronto, Berlin, Rutgers and Pennsylvania. He is the author of eight books, including Indian Political Theory (2017), Plato’s Labyrinth (2018) and A Philosophy of Autobiography (2019), Ambedkar's Preamble: A Secret History of the Constitution of India (2020), and is chief editor of B. R. Ambedkar: The Quest for Justice (5 volumes, forthcoming). He is the series editor of  Rethinking India (14 volumes, forthcoming) and editor of its first volume, Vision for a Nation (with Ashis Nandy). Among his other forthcoming works are B. R. Ambedkar: A Definitive Biography and Mind and Muscle. He is also an Ironman triathlete, and has finished five Ironman triathlons.

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge India
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 036727681X
• ISBN 13: 9780367276812
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 246
• Editor: Arya Sunaina, Rathore Aakash Singh