Meghana V. Nayak

Orientalism and ‘saving’ US state identity after 9/11

Abstract The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 11 September 2001 (9/11) radically destabilized the US sense of self and thus necessitated a particular reassertion of state identity that pivots violently on gender and race. This identity draws upon hypermasculinity, a religious code of ethics and the constitutive differences between Self/Other necessitating the persistent and forceful coding, interpretation and targeting of particular actors and politics as Islamic fundamentalist. In particular, 9/11s post-traumatic space requires US participation in an orientalist project that institutionalizes gendered and racialized violence through the infantilization, demonization, dehumanization and sexual commodification of the ‘Other’. The US state project to ‘save’ its identity intertwines religion, ideology and conflict so as to permanently etch within the American psyche a fear/loathing/paternalism regarding the ‘Orient’ abroad and within. This article proposes a feminist theoretical framework for empirically understanding and recognizing orientalisms logic in US state identity making.

The Influence of International Feminist Journal of Politics: Possibilities of Mentorship and Community for Junior Feminist Faculty

As a young, politicized Indo-American woman in a mostly white undergraduate institution in central Texas, I used to fantasize about a mentor, specifically a woman of color. While I really admired and continue to be very grateful to my compassionate, progressive and feminist professors, I ached for a thoroughly (as I realize now) romanticized myth of a mentor – a woman who shared my identity position and specific struggles, thereby giving me a sense of ‘home’ in the academy. The idea of someone who could somehow guide me through various challenges seemed even more crucial once I was accepted as a PhD student in the notoriously masculinist and Eurocentric discipline of Political Science. A few months before I left for graduate school, Chandra Talpade Mohanty (1986) delivered a keynote address at my undergraduate university on the impact of her seminal piece, ‘Under Western Eyes’. At that point, I suddenly realized that I could rely on feminist scholarship to ‘mentor’ me, in a sense, through this profession. My essay traces how the scholarship in IFjP ‘mentored’ me and many in my generation of feminist political science scholars, thus helping to bring me into the realities of building feminist communities and relationships. It is through feminist scholarship that we can demonstrate the type of work that is possible and necessary, that we build connections and solidarity and face our divisions and conflicts. Indeed, feminist networking and mentoring extends well beyond conferences, seminars, meetings and classrooms and into our research and publications. In fact, feminist presses and publications can offer

The Struggle Over Gendered Meanings in India

Abstract In this article, I argue the struggle over strategy-making regarding gender violence is also a struggle over the meanings of gender, nation, and state. I show how transnational and Indian womens networks and Hindu nationalists mobilize around the issue of gender violence, and how their different worldviews on gender and postcolonialism create different approaches and sources of appeal for women. I address the critical question of who owns strategy-making. I also use critical transnational feminism to negotiate the issue of belonging within gendered meanings.

The struggle over gendered meanings in India: How Indian women's networks, the Hindu nationalist hegemonic project, and transnational feminists address gender violence

In this article I argue the struggle over strategy-making regarding gender violence is also a struggle over the meanings of gender nation and state. I show how transnational and Indian womens networks and Hindu nationalists mobilize around the issue of gender violence and how their different worldviews on gender and post-colonialism create different approaches and sources of appeal for women. I address the critical question of who owns strategy-making. I also use critical transnational feminism to negotiate the issue of belonging within gendered meanings. (authors)

The False Choice between Universalism and Religion/Culture

I seek to engage the authors in a deeper interrogation of their claims, particularly that societies can mitigate the evolutionary legacy of patriarchy by limiting the influence of religious/cultural enclaves and instead promoting universalism, as exemplified in CEDAW and international law. I challenge and politicize this alleged “choice” between universalism and cultural/religious enclaves/relativism, as it ultimately rests on a series of too-easy dichotomies (secular/religious, western/nonwestern) that may inadvertently stymie collaborative attempts between “western” and “non-western” feminists to challenge inequitable family law and gender violence. Hudson, Bowen, and Nielsen (2011) do offer critiques of western states. They are careful to point out nuances, subtleties, and complexities with their concept of religious/cultural enclaves. They also convincingly broaden the concept of gender equality beyond formal political rights to the kind of social, legal, and economic justice encapsulated in equitable family law and freedom from violence. And, they provoke an examination of why and how gender equality and gender violence are linked. But I suggest that their empirical research might have better traction by taking seriously two problematic implications of championing the “universal” as necessarily progressive: the failure to recognize patriarchy as part of universalism; and the inattention to why and how religious/cultural enclaves are patriarchal.

L. H. M. Ling. The Dao of World Politics: Towards a Post-Westphalian, Worldist International Relations

L. H. M. Lings book challenges the hegemonic Westphalian approach to narrating world politics, drawing upon a Daoist dialectic framework to reconceptualize International Relations (IR). Daoist dia...

An Occupied Political Science: Concluding Reflections on Downtown Political Thinking

In at least two respects, Thomas Jefferson set the standard for the modern American university when he founded the University of Virginia (UVA). First, unlike existing universities such as Harvard or Yale, Jefferson sought to create a new, nonsectarian institution of higher learning that taught and trained leaders in science and public service and affairs rather than the law or religious doctrine. Second, Jefferson was largely responsible for UVA’s design, locating it in the “middle of nowhere.” Purchased from then president James Monroe in 1817, the tract the university sits on what was originally farmland outside of Charlottesville, Virginia. The geographical, intellectual, and architectural form of the American “campus” thus took shape. On the one hand, the pastoral center of the university (what is known as the “quad” on many campuses), framed by its academic buildings with the library as its focal point, became a place for quiet, monastic reflection. On the other, the campus itself stood in geographical isolation from the broader society, far removed from its social, political, cultural, and economic ills. It was and continues to be a peculiar combination of forces at work: the American university as a place of inquiry and knowledge, freed from the “superstitions” of the pulpit in the rational and scientific service of the “public”—yet also a “City on a Hill” in miniature, set apart from the ugly distractions of the town by physical, intellectual, cultural, and geographical boundaries.