South Asian Women’s Bodies

Room Number: TRS 2-164

Join the Meeting: https://ryerson.zoom.us/j/99767840185?pwd=SnM2VXkzV2JTaVJhNi9kbWxCRlY2dz09

Chair: Mariam Pirbhai (Wilfrid Laurier U)

Speakers:

Shashikala Assella (U Kelaniya), “Reimagining the past – retelling the common”

Soumya Kashyap (IIT Patna), “Just Come to Collect Your Baby”: Reterritorialisation, Neoliberal Eugenics and Assisted Reproductive Technology in Select Indian Texts”

Asma Sayed and Jacqueline Walker (Kwantlen Polytechnical U), “Rupturing Heteropatriarchal Systems: Farzana Doctor’s Seven as Literature of Protest and Activism”

Paper Summaries:

Shashikala Assella (U Kelaniya), “Reimagining the past – retelling the common”

This paper strives to understand and unpack Divakaruni’s attempt at re-narrating the myths in Palace of Illusions (2008) and The Forest of Enchantments (2019), to disrupt the established popular narrative and how the reimagined and decentred narratives of female figures offer new frameworks to understand borders of truth and myth.

Soumya Kashyap (IIT Patna), “Just Come to Collect Your Baby”: Reterritorialisation, Neoliberal Eugenics and Assisted Reproductive Technology in Select Indian Texts”

The paper critiques the unequivocal acceptance of medical technology as it re-asserts the status quo rather than defying it. ARTs have reinforced and normalised the notion of ‘wombs for rent’ and ‘baby factories’, transforming the body of Indian women into an active site of reproductive exploitation.

Asma Sayed and Jacqueline Walker (Kwantlen Polytechnical U), “Rupturing Heteropatriarchal Systems: Farzana Doctor’s Seven as Literature of Protest and Activism”

This paper explores physical and social ruptures surrounding multigenerational gendered-violence, in Farzana Doctor’s novel, Seven. Using critical hope as our theoretical framework, we argue that khatna, or rupturing of the female body, can be understood as a means of securing patriarchal power through women’s systematic disempowerment.