*CANCELLATION* Wednesday 14 June 2017 – Lunchtime Seminar with Dr Anjana Raghavan (Sociology, SHU)

** This seminar has been cancelled. A rescheduled date will be announced in due course  **

Speaker: Dr Anjana Raghavan
Title: Intersections of Performance, Violence and Resistance: Trans- Solidarities in Southern India

Anjana is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology, Department of Psychology, Sociology and Politics, Sheffield Hallam University. Her research is broadly in the areas of Decolonial Feminism, and Cultural Theory, with a focus on embodiment, race and gender. More recently, she has been working on discourses of love, and how we use love in the everyday politics and violences of our lives, as well as in broader articulations of community and belonging.

In 2016, the Supreme Court of India passed a landmark judgement recognising transgender peoples as full citizens and members of Indian society. However, transgender presence in South Asia dates back in literature to at least 4000 years. What are these changes indicative of? Is the language of Euromerican liberal- democracy, “rights” and “individual freedoms” genuinely compatible with decolonial and queer resistances? Or is it especially skilled at erasing the schisms of socio-cultural exclusions within socio-cultural and political spaces of the “global south”?

In this session, she will explore some of these questions through autobiographical narratives, as well as popular television presentations and representations of trans-identities in Southern India. How do these representations of identity converse with liberal, “global north” articulations of “diversity”, “equal rights” and “private freedoms”? Her work examines some trans-representations which fortify liberal-western notions of community and unity, as well as those which resist them; and choose instead, to articulate radical, decolonial understandings of community. The broader trajectory of this presentation is based on a forthcoming book, which explores the futures and possibilities of decolonial solidarities, dialogues and resistances.

 

12.00PM – 1.00PM
WEDNESDAY 14 JUNE 2017
CANTOR 9128

See here for details of other seminars in the series.

All SHU staff and students are welcome to attend the C3RI Lunchtime Research Seminars. If you are from outside of the University and would like to attend a seminar, please email C3RI Administrator to arrange entry.

 

Image Credit:  Firstpost.