This article explores what it means to decolonize feminism in the university today. Pushing against the idea that feminism in the university is disengaged from broader struggles, the article suggests a complex relationship between feminism as a knowledge project and as a political one. While feminism has had a long-standing decolonizing imperative within the university, equally challenging has been the decolonization of feminism. The #MeToo era has foregrounded the universalizing horizon of feminism, posing new challenges for this project. Arguing for a more complex understanding of generations and the politics of location in these debates, the article draws on a recent and not so recent feminist archive, such as the articulation of ideas of intersectionality and the ways in which multiple feminisms have been understood, in order to explore decolonizing feminism today.
Ritty Lukose is Associate Professor in the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at New York University. Her areas of interest include Anthropology, Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies, and South Asian Studies. She is the author of Liberalization’s Children: Gender, Youth and Consumer Citizenship in Globalizing India (Duke University Press, 2009) and co-editor of South Asian Feminisms (Duke University Press, 2012).