Center for Women’s Studies, JNU
Invites you to a talk on:
Muslim Women Speak: Of Dreams and Shackles
by
Ghazala Jamil
(Assistant Professor, Centre for the Study of Law and Governance, Jawaharlal Nehru University)
Date: 2nd April 2019
Time: 3:00 pm
Venue: Room No.324, SSS-I, JNU
This talk is based on the book Muslim Women Speak and attempts to make several epistemological and political moves. First being the assertion that if our aim is to understand what kind of action will ameliorate young Muslim women’s lives and situation, their own voices need to become the centre of our inquiry. To this end the presentation will include a critical exploration of the everyday lives of young Muslim women, their aspirations, their fears, and their points of view; and insights on the agency of young Muslim women and the impact of violence on their everyday lives after a violent ‘event’ or ‘episode’ passes into history and memory. Second is the assertion that the state of powerlessness experienced by Muslim women presented as being voiceless is predicated upon ‘listening’. The paper discusses safe, sympathetic spaces that bring forth articulation and self-representation, and dwells upon the epistemological and socio-political concerns of ‘silencing’ for the lack of ‘listening’. In doing so, this book confronts the fault lines within the Indian feminist sisterhood and offers a considered critique of the women’s movement in India from within. In the third move an attempt is made to read a structural narrative of socio-political situatedness of Indian Muslims—men and women—as ascribed into the narratives of diversity and intersectionality.
