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Fem Leg Stud (2012) 20:120
DOI 10.1007/s10691-012-9193-x
Ratna Kapur
Published online: 28 March 2012 Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012
Abstract The SlutWalk campaigns around the world have triggered a furious debate on whether they advance or limit feminist legal politics. This article examines the location of campaigns such as the SlutWalk marches in the context of feminist legal advocacy in postcolonial India, and discusses whether their emergence signies the demise of feminism or its incarnation in a different guise. The author argues that the SlutWalks, much like the Pink Chaddi (panty) campaign in India, provide an important normative and discursive challenge to a specic strand of feminism based on male domination and female subordination in the area of sexuality and also speaks to the emergence of consumer agency in the very heart of pleasure in the neo-liberal moment. It serves as a space clearing gesture, a form of feminism lite, rather than offering a transformative or revolutionary politics, and thus enables the possibility of feminist theoretical positions in a postcolonial context that have hitherto been marginalised or ignored in feminist legal advocacy in India to emerge.
Keywords SlutWalk Pink Chaddi Consumer agency Dominance feminism
Feminist critique Postcolonial India Feminist legal advocacy Feminism lite
Introduction
People are turning out to be more fashionable .all these things they provoke; provoke these types of things [rape] which are not in the control of the police.
R. Kapur (&)
Geneva School of Diplomacy and International Relations, Chteau de Penthes, 18, Chemin de LImpratrice, Pregny, 1292 Geneva, Switzerlande-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]
R. Kapur
Jindal Global Law School, Sonepat, NCR Delhi, India
Pink Chaddis and SlutWalk Couture: The Postcolonial Politics of Feminism Lite
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2 R. Kapur
When you are taking food which gives you good josh (urges), you tend to be more naughty.1 Within minutes of these words being uttered by the director general of police (DGP) of Andhra Pradesh, a state in southeastern India, in late 2011, they were posted on YouTube and provoked an avalanche of protests from the Union Home Minister, womens groups, and ordinary citizens, against the message that attire was an indication of a womans availability.2 In an effort to contain the fallout, the DGP issued what was ostensibly a clarication stating that all he meant...