Contribution short abstract

Reflecting on our experiences of being part of moments of rupture and destabilization of both institutional mechanisms and feminist practice within academia and beyond, our contribution grapples with the promise and pitfalls of feminist praxis, using frameworks of collective care and ‘Complaint’.

Contribution long abstract

As part of the #MeToo movement, a list of sexual harassers in academia (LoSHA) was published online in October 2017. This resulted in an eruption of long-suppressed contestation within feminism in Indian academia along the fault lines of caste, implicating multiple forms of entrenched privilege. In April 2022, an action-research project engaging with at-risk queer and trans youth was abandoned by the feminist research organization which had initially approved the project and secured a grant to fund it, ostensibly because the project was too interventionist.

Reflecting on our experiences of and participation in these moments of rupture, we also examine an experience of an alternative pedagogical design which focused on reflective practice and peer learning, creating pockets of support, reflection and conflict, as a possible example of strong feminist pedagogy. Finally, we discuss a composite story of our shared experience of conducting research within academic institutions, demonstrating the impossibility of such endeavours without the crucial care-work of friends, family and others.

Our proposed contribution to the round-table analyzes these four stories, highlighting the ways institutional mechanisms and pedagogical structures often constrain feminists to reinforce structures of inequality. Seeking to survive within academia then becomes our act of feminism, leaving intact the illusion that our research output is our contribution towards feminist politics.

In our analysis, we juxtapose the ‘counter-institutional’ work of complaint that marks the complainant as a ‘killjoy’ making it harder to be heard, with the silent and invisible work of collective-care necessary for the smooth functioning of academia.