Changing the Subject: Feminist and Queer Politics in Neoliberal India

Srila Roy explores the complex relationship between gender, sexuality, and neoliberalism in India, revealing the paradoxical effects of global funds and the amplification of queer activism. Through a decade-long ethnography of two West Bengal organizations, she highlights the specificity of activist and NGO work around gender and sexuality and traces the changes in feminist governmentality shaped by transnational neoliberalism. Roy offers a new way of knowing feminism, recognizing its co-optation and transformative potential.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 280 pages
Publication date: 21 October 2022
Publisher: Duke University Press

Srila Roy's book Changing the Subject explores the complex and rapidly evolving terrain of gender and sexual politics in India within the context of global neoliberalism. The consequences of India's liberalization policies were paradoxical, as they brought in significant amounts of global funds for social development and NGOs, which initially seemed to support the struggles for women's rights. However, these funds also had the effect of co-opting and depoliticizing these struggles, while simultaneously amplifying the visibility and vitality of queer activism. Roy's book delves into the specificities of activist and NGO work around gender and sexuality through a decade-long ethnography of two organizations based in West Bengal, one focusing on lesbian, bisexual, and transgender issues and the other on rural women's empowerment. Through her analysis, Roy reveals how historical and local feminist currents have shaped contemporary queer and non-queer neoliberal feminisms, and how the interplay between these historical techniques of activist governance and queer feminist governmentality's focus on changing the self offers a new way of understanding feminism, both as something that has always been co-opted and as a transformative force in the world.

Weight: 410g
Dimension: 228 x 153 x 21 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781478018889