Changing the Subject

Srila Roy is Professor of Sociology at the University of the Witwatersrand, author of Remembering Revolution: Gender, Violence, and Subjectivity in India’s Naxalbari Movement, and editor of New South Asian Feminisms: Paradoxes and Possibilities.

"Changing the Subject brilliantly unpacks the different governmentalities at work in contemporary neoliberal West Bengal and within the activist and NGO world. Srila Roy shows that it is precisely within the intimate and complex interaction between processes of governance and the self that the possibility of self-making within and against dominant norms takes place." - Catherine Rottenberg (Sociological Review) "There is no doubt that this is an important and topical book, filling a very real gap. It is provocative in its conceptualisation and therefore an extremely productive addition to multiple areas of inquiry, including neo-liberalism and social movements, queer movements, feminist fields, development studies among others. It invites one to engage with this version of the story to interrogate it and multiply the many other possible stories of this moment in the life of the feminist world-making project." - Sneha Gole (Economic and Political Weekly) "Through her research and critique, she demonstrates powerfully a praxis against neoliberal, nationalist, and nativist logics. Srila Roy's book is a vibrant and richly ethnographic contribution to debates on political futures now." - Bridget Kenny (Anthropology & Humanism) "Roy’s groundbreaking work, Changing the Subject, emerges as a beacon. . . . Changing the Subject offers different ways to think of feminism’s co-optation in the context of global neoliberalism by thinking of feminism’s entanglement with the forms of power, encouraging a deeper understanding of its multifaceted impact on individual transformation and societal change. . . . Thorough, meticulous ethnographic analysis reveals how feminist and queer political organizations negotiate their roles within broader power dynamics, engaging with and transforming prevailing governmentalities." - Kiran Raveendran (Women's Studies) "The proficiency and ease with which [Roy] threads together the fluid entanglements within and between feminism, queerness, neoliberal governmentality and the self, is awe-inspiring; especially for a reader incapable of articulating such deep connections. In addition, theorizing such entanglements and recounting powerful feminist subaltern stories from the margins, has opened new pathways to imagine self-(re)making and feminism in a neoliberal age." - Amya Agarwal (Doing Sociology) "Roy convincingly argues that feminists both in India and elsewhere should not remain attached to a ‘proper feminist subject’ against whom the self might always be judged as lacking, but rather allow for ambivalence and uncertainty (p. 159)." - Stephanie Clare (Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory)

• Abbreviations  ixPreface: We, Feminists  xiAcknowledgments  xviiIntroduction. Changing the Subject of Indian Feminism  11. Indian Feminism in the New Millennium: Co-optation, Entanglement, Intersection  262. Queer Activism as Governmentality: Regulating Lesbians, Making Queer  473. Queer Self-Fashioning: In, out of, and beyond the Closet  774. Feminist Governmentality: Entangled Histories and Empowered Women  1015. Subaltern Self-Government: Precarious Transformations  132Conclusion. On Critique and Care  160Notes  177References  215Index  243