Feminist Networks and the Conjuncture

Sarah Banet-Weiser 0:01
ICA Presents.

Hello and welcome to Feminist Networks and the Conjuncture, a podcast brought to you by the International Communication Association. My name is Sarah Banet-Weiser, and I am a joint professor in the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania and the Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California. Over the course of this podcast, we’ll be looking at conjunctures, defined broadly as contingent moments of social crisis, to investigate their impact on feminisms and the possibility for social change. For our first episode, I’m thrilled to have invited two guests, Srila Roy and Simidele Dosekun, to discuss their work on transnational feminisms and the application of these feminisms to the broader Me Too movement.

Hi everyone. I'm super, super happy and grateful for the opportunity to actually have a series of conversations with incredible feminist scholars to talk about sort of feminisms in the global movement: What are some of the conditions and possibilities for feminisms in different geopolitical areas? And also just to have a conversation about what we can do in the future and how we can move forward in terms of thinking about feminism and thinking about the conjuncture. We're kicking it off today with Professor Srila Roy and Professor Simidele Dosekun. And Professor Roy is a professor of sociology at Wits, and has a forthcoming book called Changing the Subject: Feminist and Queer Politics in Neoliberal India, which is coming out soon from Duke University Press. Simi is a professor at the London School of Economics — I was super honored to be a colleague of hers there for a couple of years before I left, and I'm so happy that we're still in conversation. And her book is called Fashioning Postfeminism: Spectacular Femininity and Transnational Culture. And both Simi and Srila work on feminisms in different geopolitical contexts, thinking in particular of India and Africa. So, Srila, do you want to start us off with talking a little bit about what your book is about?

Srila Roy 2:43
Yeah, sure. Sarah, thank you so much. It's so exciting to do this conversation, especially since I haven't even received the proofs of my book. In a nutshell, the story was very linear: it sort of suggested that feminism went from being an autonomous set of social movements to very institutionalized forms of, you know, state feminisms or NGOs. And I was particularly interested in NGO-ization as well as process and as a politics and, indeed, as an affect. But the other thing that was happening in the conjuncture was the same set of conditions — which is ostensibly global neoliberalism — had created a kind of vibrancy to issues around sexual rights and sexual organizing, which didn't map onto these narratives of decline and despair and corruption. So I was just really interested in the paradoxes of this particular moment.

Sarah Banet-Weiser 3:38
I'm going to turn now to Simi and to hear about your book, which I have read and assigned in classes, and it's fantastic. It's wonderful in many ways, but it's also a model for many people on how to do ethnographic fieldwork. So, over to you Simi.

Simidele Dosekun 3:56
Thank you very much, Sarah, for the invitation. So I did the interviews in 2013, so it’s almost 10 years that I did the field work and collected the data. But basically, it was about what I at the time was thinking was a new form of — I don't call it or think of it as feminist subjectivity, per se. But I suppose that for me it was a new kind of feminine subjectivity. I was looking at women who — it was through the lens of dress and fashion, and beauty — women who dress in what I called or thought of as a spectacularly feminine style. So, very sort of hyper normative feminine style. And I was interested in the question of what that meant. But I guess I imagined that the kind of subjectivity that I, the kind of femininity that I argue is being fashioned by the particular women who I interviewed, as I said, almost 10 years ago, I would say, or I imagine has actually sort of shifted again anyway, since that time.

Srila Roy 4:47
But, can I quickly just say something about another book that's coming out sooner? It's coming out this April, looking at the Me Too movement in India and South Africa. And that's basically a set of essays that look at kind of pre-histories of GBV activism, gender based violence activism, in both these contexts.

Sarah Banet-Weiser 5:08
Yes, thank you so much for mentioning that book. I'm really, really excited about this book, and trying to figure out what we are thinking as feminist scholars about the Me Too movement several years after this sort of social media, celebrity fueled movement took off with Alyssa Milano's tweet. But also how some of the ways in which Tarana Burke's original movement about survivors of sexual assault, especially women of color — how some of those logics have actually started to mobilize in different ways in relation to and also as a challenge to some of the more mainstream popular feminism that is the Me Too movement. I would love to hear more about like Me Too in India. There was this moment that was so mobilizing about this visibility of women coming forward. And like you said Simi, kind of a reclaiming of feminism. The Me Too movement was super bolstering for me and for my students — and I have a young daughter, for my daughter. I was, you know, there was this moment, and it just felt like, so quickly, within one year, you had the same media outlets publishing stories about how white men were actually the victims of Me Too. And so the ways in which victimhood is so malleable within this neoliberal context of kind of freedoms, where, again, the market sort of dictates how it is and in what ways we can position ourselves as victims of sexual violence or victims of women falsely accusing men of sexual violence. I'm wondering, how do you think about the Me Too movement in India, Srila? And do you see some of those tensions and contradictions also happening?

Srila Roy 6:57
So, Me Too, was, again, that moment in which a quite established feminist community could interpolate other kinds of publics into a feminist consciousness-raising moment, and demand accountability from state, from institutions, around sexual harassment, etc. But I think what was far more interesting about Me Too in India was how we’re to reveal this terrain of feminist friction. I still think there's a way in which, you know, the North-South divide produces feminisms in the South as very flattened and homogenous. And that's partly what my own monograph is trying to do. And partly what I think the Me Too movement revealed: these very, very deep frictions, particularly around caste. I have a piece which I wrote then where I say that, in India, Me Too maps along generational lines, as it has elsewhere — where older feminists are sort of accusing younger feminists of being too hashtag-driven, of not being deferential enough to their long trysts with the laws and the ambivalent gifts off that by going off and producing lists of sexual predators, etc. But really, it wasn't a generational conflict. It was actually a conflict about feminists voices that are either majoritized or minoritized in one particular context. And there's a peculiar way in which, because of the ways in which our feminisms are constantly a foil to white western feminism, those very obvious tensions get flattened. Even those voices that have been very critical of Me Too in the North, by saying it reproduces white feminists logics. There's still a way in which those critiques center Northern feminisms and doesn't think enough about the transnational. I don't know, going back to the conjucture and also neoliberalism, I think once we just open up this, this far broader field of thinking, maybe from the South, we actually have to think of these moments in far more messy ways, I suppose. I mean I know that sounds like a bit of a cop out, but -

Sarah Banet-Weiser 9:03
No, it's not a cop out at all. I think that it actually — to characterize this moment and feminism within this particular conjuncture that we’re in as messy is absolutely spot on. I always end up thinking about how something like a social movement has been monetized and has been marketized. I think it's kind of interesting that it has its own emoji on Twitter, right? It has a logo, basically. Right? And you can buy Me Too T-shirts and Me Too earrings. There's something about the branding of feminism in this way that does exactly that. It centers the North, as you said, as the key logic, or the key analytic for thinking through this. The Me Too movement tends to, within a neoliberal context, focus on the individual. And so once you become an individual who has been wronged, it kind of takes or distracts us from thinking about collective politics. And so those feminist frictions that you're talking about, Srila, which are very specific to context, especially when you're talking about caste, end up becoming individualized. I think it's so interesting that you said this is not a generational conflict. It's very easy for critics of feminism to say, “Oh, this is just the second wave feminism fighting with the third wave,” or old women not understanding young women, or the norms of changes have changed. It's really an easy cop out to say that's what's wrong with feminism, rather than thinking through, like you said, these frictions and sort of hotspots within different analytics, what should be the core logic. Just to connect to Srila's point about like, what does it mean to think about Me Too in South Africa or Me Too in India? What does the shift look like within a kind of transnational politics? Your work is always deeply and beautifully embedded in transnational politics. And you remind us how to think about these kind of movements outside of the North, outside of a western context.

Simidele Dosekun 11:01
I am interested in, and maybe not sufficiently informed about, Me Too, as an example, as a movement. I guess I'm not so sure what we even mean by that. I mean, so for example, when you say that Me Too has a logo and a brand and so on, on some level, I'm thinking, but who is that? Who is Me Too? I mean, yes, we know literally where that sort of phrasing came from, both in terms of the celebrities that first kind of put it out on Twitter, but then also the kind of backstory. When you say the movement, what are we referring to? Where is it? Who is it? Does it have a headquarters? Do you see what I mean? I guess I'm not quite sure. And then just to say in the Nigerian context, more broadly — For me, it's a bit difficult to think about or talk about the movement. Again, because I'm not sure where it is, I suppose. You see what I mean, and who it is. I find it a bit difficult to think of it in terms of movement. I don't know if, in the sense that I just wonder whether that is as — I don't want to say structured because that might be too strong a word — but whether it's not a lot more kind of amorphous, and also potentially a lot more individualized, than movement suggests. So, but I said, I'm not really sure because I'm not on the scene, as it were.

Sarah Banet-Weiser 12:09
I think that's super interesting. I mean, again, I'm just speaking on behalf of myself, that sometimes I catch myself being sort of lazy about using the term movement. Right? Because, you know, it's been talked about as the Me Too movement. I love your question, like, where is the headquarters? Where are they? Where's the Me Too—

Simidele Dosekun 12:27
But I do mean it seriously. I mean, not like headquarters, but literally, there’s a logo, who created that logo? And in the sense that who had or assumes the prerogative, I suppose, to do something like that? Do you see what I mean, to say, like, “Oh, the Me Too, this is who we are, this is where we are?” I don't know, I am actually genuinely asking that question.

Srila Roy 12:43
This is one of the difficulties and the generative possibilities of the conjuncture, right — that we've lost the sense of a movement, of feminism as being an entity that is very legible as a movement. Which would have certain card carrying members and look a certain way and certainly —

Simidele Dosekun 13:02
— and a certain place, if I could just throw that in as well, some kind of location.

Srila Roy 13:06
Exactly, exactly. And I think that creates both a set of specific anxieties, but also possibilities. I mean, I often say moment, but then like there is a slippage into movement. It's also interesting to think about, well, maybe that idea of the movement is lost. And we have to come up with a different way of terming what we think are these sort of very spontaneous, informal, ephemeral moments of organizing —

Simidele Dosekun 13:32
— and conjunctural as well. So, to come back to the phrase, "feminists frictions," because I mean, I mean, obviously, there are frictions any — all the time and everywhere. When it is a movement in the sense that we've been talking about, in the more kind of structured, and card carrying and — then there's all kinds of other kinds of frictions that come along with that. As a younger feminist — I mean, I remember a few years ago, I was on a panel at Barnard. It was about something like intergenerational tensions in the African feminist movement or something like that — I mean, some of us on the panel were even sort of pushing back against the very premise of it, which is that there was this sort of generational fight. But in that conversation, there was a certain thing about some of the older women — you know, this idea of like, “You younger girls need to come and get your feminist training from us.” The younger ones among us were sort of like, well, actually, it's not that straightforward. You know, it’s to sort of disrespect other people's experience, or that you've had years of a certain sort of struggle, but it doesn't mean that you therefore then just teach us feminism, right? Not least because it's a different conjuncture anyway. It's not the same moment. And the issues are — I mean, it's always the same issues, but they take different kinds of forms.

Sarah Banet-Weiser 14:37
My point earlier about generational conflict, is also that the conflict between generations becomes the politics. Instead of actually having a collective feminist politics about equal pay or gendered violence, or all sorts of things, the focus the feminist trajectory becomes this generational tension. I also think, to the question about headquarters again and who designed the logo — I think, Srila, you were pointing to that early on in this conversation. You're interested in this sort of trajectory or the arc of a collective feminist movement is something that has been institutionalized. And I think you used the word NGO-ization. The kind of intwining of NGO politics and development politics with a version of feminism and what that ends up doing. I'm teaching racial capitalism this week. And so I have been doing a lot of rereading of Cedric Robinson and thinking about different ways in which capitalism itself has — obviously, racism is not an epiphenomenon of capitalism. The differentiation and hierarchies are part of the actual design of capitalism. And that also speaks to the ways in which a popular feminism is not anti-capitalist, right? That’s not it's goal. I wonder whether or not it could ever be a movement if it is still so closely connected to neoliberal capitalism. So that's part of my interest in the branding of it. How can we talk about actually challenging patriarchal structure, or challenging racist structure, if we're keeping intact a political, economic and ideological system that is designed, literally designed, to divide the labors of women and of people of color in particular ways? And whether or not we can have a transnational feminist movement that also doesn't challenge capitalism.

Srila Roy 16:39
Firstly, to say that, of course, there are feminist movements that are anti capital. There are, they're major movements. And again, I think this is about being more generous and more critically generous with our lens — where are we looking for feminism as a movement or a moment today? And obviously, if we're looking at it, you know, only in specific places, they're going to reflect very specific logics. Being anti capital is at the core of a lot of movements, organizations, grassroots campaigns, in the global South. But having said that, I also think — and my book really tries to posit this conceptually — to basically say, there is no out. There's no position of purity from which you're going to step outside the market. I mean, that's one of the things that actually propels some very ambivalent, to put it mildly, outcomes of NGO-ized or institutionalized activism, because they are haunted by a politics of purity, by a politics of autonomy, which create practices of voluntary labor in the development sector.

Simidele Dosekun 17:42
To counter Srila's point, you know, in the African context there are all these kinds of — I mean, I guess they're NGOs officially, but they're these new sort of pro-business training, coaching-type spaces. Those kinds of things that are very much about — for the most part, educated, quite class-privileged women — about lifting them up through business. And there's the Goldman Sachs training program or whatever it is. And you know, other kinds of things like that. That is a movement, actually, and it is transnational. And you can literally trace it, you can see it. It's development oriented, but it's not grassroots development, it's not that development — it's the urban, already privileged, already shiny, let's make it more shiny, more glossy and more successful and so on.

Sarah Banet-Weiser 18:25
I loved this conversation. One of the reasons why I wanted to have this conversation with the two of you is because both of you and your work have actually really, really motivated me to be — exactly like you said — more generous in my lens. Of course, there are anti capitalist feminist movements, as you said. And they're often centering an intersection of struggles, rather than a singular lens. And so I think that's really important. And I also think that being generous with our lens is actually embracing ambivalence. So I think it's very hard for us to think and to embrace ambivalence. But for me, it's been the most helpful in thinking like, what is it that I want my work to do? What is it I want feminism to do? What is the cultural work of feminism? If we focus on it in a way that is so strictly defined by parameters of morality and moralism, we're not gonna get very far I don't think. With that, I'm just going to say I'm so grateful to the two of you for your amazing work and for sharing it with ICA and with me. And thanks for being on the podcast being my first guests.

Srila Roy 19:35
Thank you so much Sarah. I think this really shows a fabulous generosity that we should all be replicating. Thank you.

Simidele Dosekun 19:42
Yeah. Thank you. Thanks for having us.

Sarah Banet-Weiser 19:55
Feminist Networks and the Conjecture is a production of the International Communication Association Podcast Network. This podcast series is brought to you by the Annenberg Center for Collaborative Communication, established as a joint effort between the schools of communication at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Southern California. Our producer is Lucia Barnum. Our senior production coordinator is Nick Song. Our executive producer is Aldo Diaz Caballero. Thank you again to our guests, Srila Roy and Simidele Dosekun. The theme music is by Lance Conrad. And to learn more about me, my guests today, and our podcast series, check out the show notes in the episode description. Thanks so much for listening!