City Libraries, City of Gold Coast

Real and imagined women, gender, culture and postcolonialism, Rajeswari Sunder Rajan

eng

Includes bibliographical references and index

illustrations

index present

non fiction

Real and imagined women

electronic resource

Rajeswari Sunder Rajan

gender, culture and postcolonialism

'Real & Imagined Women' is an essential addition to the postcolonial debate which offers a challenging mode of 'reading resistance' which destroys the stereotyped and sensationalised humanist image of the 'third world woman' as victim., How can the women-as-victim be read as a resisting subject? Real and Imagined Women explores the position of the female subject in a postcolonial state. Rajeswari Sunder Rajan investigates the problematic relationship between the theory' of the first world' against the matter' of the third' - that is, she brings postcolonial theory to bear on the politics of gender, religion and the culture of contemporary India, focussing on the practice and the representaion of sati. Her writing engages with such subjects as pre-colonial Tamil and Indian texts and colonial Imperialist texts; Indian writings and films; women's victimization by forms of sanctioned violence and their fraught, if passive, subject-position; contemporary novels by Indian women writers, and the elite' women-as-leader, focussing on the discourse generated by Indira Ghandi. Real and Imagined Women explores a series of fascinating and important questions for feminists working with postcolonial theory to offer a challenging mode of reading resistance' which destroys the stereotyped and sensationalised humanist image of the third world woman' as victim

specialized