Ranu Samantrai – författare

Are the conflicts that accompany the growth of postcolonial ethnic, cultural, and religious diasporas undermining the political culture of first-world nations? AlterNatives explains why the hope of a harmonious, fully consensual society is misguided. Ranu Samantrai argues that the proliferation of sources of dissent can hold liberal democratic nations accountable for their political promises. Eschewing the settlements between majority and minority groups proposed by liberal and communitarian theorists, she proposes a radicalization of democracy grounded in poststructuralist analysis of contingent individual and collective subjects.The black British women's movement of the 1980s (comprising women of African Caribbean and South Asian origin) is the occasion for this historical investigation of a national field of similitudes and differences. Through parliamentary papers and political history Samantrai charts the changing definition of Britain in the post-W.W.II period and tracks a new nationalization of disparate peoples into a narrowly territorial, homogeneous community of kin. In an innovative reading of nationality and immigration law she uncovers the gender anxieties that justified the legal racialization of British national identity.Black British feminism was born in response to the privileging of race as the marker of collective identity and the containment of gender as an internal and relatively insignificant communal matter. In that context the multiracial constituency and anti-communal politics of the movement exposed the instability of majority and minority communities and undermined the ambitions of would-be representatives. Samantrai examines newsletters, political pamphlets, memoirs, conference proceedings, scholarly essays, fiction, and poetry to demonstrate how the movement turned the identity discourse of British racial politics against its intended purposes. Dissensions within its own ranks prompted members to pursue political strategies that value heterogeneity and conflict as motivators of change. AlterNatives tests the efficacy of their strategies in case studies of seemingly intractable disagreements between cultural traditionalists, anti-racists, and feminists regarding the continuity of troubling but culturally significant gender practices.

Are the conflicts that accompany the growth of postcolonial ethnic, cultural, and religious diasporas undermining the political culture of first-world nations? AlterNatives explains why the hope of a harmonious, fully consensual society is misguided. Ranu Samantrai argues that the proliferation of sources of dissent can hold liberal democratic nations accountable for their political promises. Eschewing the settlements between majority and minority groups proposed by liberal and communitarian theorists, she proposes a radicalization of democracy grounded in poststructuralist analysis of contingent individual and collective subjects.The black British women's movement of the 1980s (comprising women of African Caribbean and South Asian origin) is the occasion for this historical investigation of a national field of similitudes and differences. Through parliamentary papers and political history Samantrai charts the changing definition of Britain in the post-W.W.II period and tracks a new nationalization of disparate peoples into a narrowly territorial, homogeneous community of kin. In an innovative reading of nationality and immigration law she uncovers the gender anxieties that justified the legal racialization of British national identity.Black British feminism was born in response to the privileging of race as the marker of collective identity and the containment of gender as an internal and relatively insignificant communal matter. In that context the multiracial constituency and anti-communal politics of the movement exposed the instability of majority and minority communities and undermined the ambitions of would-be representatives. Samantrai examines newsletters, political pamphlets, memoirs, conference proceedings, scholarly essays, fiction, and poetry to demonstrate how the movement turned the identity discourse of British racial politics against its intended purposes. Dissensions within its own ranks prompted members to pursue political strategies that value heterogeneity and conflict as motivators of change. AlterNatives tests the efficacy of their strategies in case studies of seemingly intractable disagreements between cultural traditionalists, anti-racists, and feminists regarding the continuity of troubling but culturally significant gender practices.

Considers the past, present, and future of interdisciplinary fields motivated by concerns for social justice.In the 1960s and 1970s, activists who focused on the academy as a key site for fostering social change began by querying the assumptions of the traditional disciplines and transforming their curricula, putting into place women's and ethnic studies programs that changed both the subject and methods of scholarship. The pattern of scholars and activists joining forces to open fields of research and teaching continued in subsequent decades, and recent additions, including critical race studies, queer studies, cultural studies, and postcolonial studies, take as their epistemological foundation the inherently political nature of all knowledge production. Interdisciplinarity and Social Justice seizes this opportune moment in the history of interdisciplinary fields to review their effects on our intellectual and political landscape, to evaluate their ability to deliver promised social benefits, and to consider their futures. The essays collected in this volume detail histories of the interdisciplinary fields that emerged from social movements, examine how effectively they have achieved their goals of intellectual and social change, and consider the challenges they now face inside and outside the academy.