In recent discussions on gender justice, there has been increasing focus on transnational feminist networks as facilitating “solidarity across borders”. In the face of growing global interdependence, the hope is that a transnational citizen’s movement could potentially galvanize global co-operation in overcoming gender violence and promoting gender equality. In this lecture, I argue that while new modes of collective agency can emerge by drawing on gendered vulnerability as a site of political agency, “global sisterhood” can inadvertently also function as a technology of neoliberal governmentality. Against this background, my talk will critically engage with the prospects and limits of global gender justice from a postcolonial perspective.
Short biography:
Nikita Dhawan is Professor of Political Science and Gender Studies at the University of Gießen, Germany.
Her publications include:
- Impossible Speech: On the Politics of Silence and Violence (2007);
- Decolonizing Enlightenment: Transnational Justice, Human Rights and Democracy in a Postcolonial World (ed., 2014);
- Global Justice and Desire: Queering Economy (co-ed., 2015);
- Negotiating Normativity: Postcolonial Appropriations, Contestations and Transformations (co-ed., 2016);
- Difference that makes no Difference: The Non-Performativity of Intersectionality and Diversity (ed., 2017) and
- Reimagining the State: Theoretical Challenges and Transformative Possibilities (ed., forthcoming).
She received the Käthe Leichter Award in 2017 for outstanding achievements in the pursuit of women’s and gender studies and in support of the women’s movement and the achievement of gender equality.
