CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2023
| Author | Sengupta, Oishi |
|---|---|
| Title | Archiving Care; Perspectives on Transnational Queer-Feminism from Urban New Delhi |
| Summary | Care is a dense and metamorphosing act when evaluated under the spatio-temporality of political machinations, resistance, and the omnipresent threat of an oppressive State. This dissertation archives practices of care that queer people living in urban New Delhi practice in their everyday lives, particularly within the context of pervasive state-sanctioned violence. By conducting interviews with six participants (aged between 18-35) who arrived in the city in different ways, I illustrate the necessity of centre care as a form of political participation and its role in political resistance against the ruling party. Delhi was chosen for its familiarity, the unique form of belonging that it generates as a consequence of the way its inhabitants arrive in it and its location as the political epicentre. Responses received from the participants are analysed to reflect patterns within the psychic imagination of what constitutes political participation and resistance. The concept of “showing up” which centres physical participation as the core element of political resistance is critiqued. In a more detailed analysis, the observations and narratives are subsequently situated within the global histories of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, atrocities against Native-American tribes, tribal communities in postcolonial India, and neoliberalism that have shaped care in the form that it is known today to warn against the fetishizing of care work and simultaneously offering a means of reimagining the tenets of care using the suggestions made by Black, indigenous, and queer-feminist scholars of colour such as Anzaldúa, Audre Lorde, and bell hooks. Transnational influences informing imaginaries of care are essential in forming a sense of solidarity amidst the global rise of hate-based politics. While this study is rooted in urban New Delhi, archiving practices of care is an important concept that can be broadly applied to other cultural contexts that share a history or are presently under the rule of oppressive political regimes. This dissertation also contributes to the concept of expanding upon the notion of the Global South by moving away from the articulation of the ‘subaltern’ as has been established by the field of Subaltern Studies. This is a move not only to identify the nuances of internal politics that are not recognized through the homogenizing of the Global but also to establish the need for a different register to articulate the concerns of those occupying the margins regardless of the geopolitical territory. |
| Supervisor | Loney, Hannah Jane |
| Department | Gender Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2023/sengupta_oishi.pdf |
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