Selected Texts
“We Inter Are: Identity Politics & #Me Too, Feminist Review, 122, no. 1, (2019) :198-204.
“A Counter Aesthetic at Work: Lata Mani in conversation with C.S. Venkiteswaran,” Chalanchitra Sameeksha, September 2018, 32-45. Transcript of conversation, Filmmaker in Focus, International Documentary and Short Film Festival, Trivandrum, July 21, 2018. Here
"Writing the Present," Economic and Political Weekly, December 2015
Critical discourse in India has largely been shaped by the social sciences. This article suggests that the exploratory sensibility of the arts and the humanities has a specific and productive contribution to make in the present context in which knowledge is instrumentalised and language deemed transactional. Download here.
“Reading the Colonial Archive” Lecture, Goldsmiths, October 23 2014.
In her talk 'Reading the Colonial Archive' written for the MA Gender, Media Culture students, at Goldsmiths, Lata Mani reflected on her research journeys, including the making of her classic article 'Cultural Theory, Colonial Texts: Reading Eye Witness Accounts of Widow Burning' and the subsequent book 'Contentious Traditions'. Download here.
"Sex and the Signal-free Corridor: Rethinking the Feminist Imaginary," Economic & Political Weekly, February 2014
This article reflects on the idea of the city shared alike by feminism and neo-liberalism and its regrettable implications for how the question of women’s sexual freedom is articulated and defended. Download here.
"Urban Triptych," Seminar, August 2012
Denselypacked labyrinthine streets are lined with higgledy-piggledy constructions. Lean blocks rise skyward beside squat single-storey buildings framed by clouds. Read here / download here.
"The Ayodhya Judgement: A Response," Economic & Political Weekly, October 2011
Nivedita Menon interprets me as having “applauded” the Ayodhya verdict in my piece in EPW (Mani 2010), considering it a “vindication” of how the social world of our subcontinent is formed by its religio-sacred inheritances (Menon 2011). This reading simplifies my perspective and it is important to clarify my position. Download here.
"Human Dignity and Suffering: Some Considerations," Economic & Political Weekly, September 2011
Does suffering affect dignity? This essay examines the consequences of construing dignity not as an intrinsic, constitutive quality integral to our very being but as an extrinsic, variable property dependent on certain conditions. Download here.
"The Ayodhya Verdict, "Economic & Political Weekly, October 2010
Was the destruction of Babri masjid justified? Absolutely not. Was the judgment fair? If one thinks of history and law as the primary means of just recompense it was clearly not. If however one asks whether it may facilitate peace understood as a negotiated compromise between people who have no choice but to live with each other and with all that binds them and all that threatens to separate them, things look more hopeful and less bleak. Download here.
"The Phantom of Globality and the Delirium of Excess," Economic & Political Weekly, September 2008
Globalisation requires an unanchored discourse of globality to mediate its disruptive effects. This phantom discourse does not merely disarticulate the real relations between neoliberal globalisation and the material realities it enters, transforms, or destroys. It also offers a mode of affiliation for its chief beneficiaries. Download here.
"Some Thoughts on Because I Have a Voice" Talk at the Bengaluru launch of Arvind Narrain & Gautam Bhan eds., Because I Have a Voice, 2005.
There is much that can be said by way of a response to Because I Have a Voice, but I will restrict my remarks today to one issue alone. I would like to ask whether queer theory serves us well in setting out to theorize the diversity of sexual and gender practices and identities in India. Download here.
Early Work
"Crosscurrents, Crosstalk: Race, ‘Postcoloniality’ and the Politics of Location," (with Ruth Frankenberg), Cultural Studies, 7:2, May 1993, 292-310.
"Cultural Theory, Colonial Texts: Eyewitness Accounts of Widow Burning," in Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson and Paula Treichler ,Eds., Cultural Studies, New York: Routledge, 1992, 392-405 also published as “The Female Subject, The Colonial Gaze: Reading Eyewitness Accounts of Widow Burning,” in Tejaswini Niranjana, P. Sudhir and Vivek Dhareshwar, Eds., Interrogating Modernity: Culture and Colonialism in India, Calcutta: Seagull, 1993, 273-90.
"Gender, Class and Cultural Conflict: Indu Krishnan’s Knowing Her Place," Samar, Winter, 1992, 11-14; also in Women of South Asian Descent Collective, Eds., Our Feet Walk the Sky: Women of the South Asian Diaspora, San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1993, 32-36.
"Multiple Mediations: Feminist Scholarship in the Age of Multinational Reception,” Feminist Review, 35, Summer 1990, 24-41.
“Contentious Traditions: The Debate on Sati in Colonial India,” Cultural Critique, 7, Fall 1987, 119-156; also in Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid, Eds., Recasting Women: Essays in Colonial History, New Delhi: Kali, 1989, 88-126.
“The Production of an Official Discourse on Sati in Early Nineteenth Century Bengal,” in Francis Barker et al Eds., Europe and its Others, Colchester: University of Essex, 1985, vol.1, 107-27; also in Economic and Political Weekly: Review of Women’s Studies, April 26 1986, 32-40.
“The Challenge of Orientalism,” (with Ruth Frankenberg), Economy and Society, 14:2, May 1985, 174-92