Rinita Mazumdar: It is interesting and rather coincidental that while cases of rape and the apathy of the West Bengal State is going on, I have been asked by Dr. Ishita Mukherjee, Director of Women’s Studies, Calcutta University to teach feminist methodology in M.Phil. classes during my appointment as a Visiting Faculty of Women Studies Research Center, Calcutta University between July 15 through August 15. Feminist methodology is radical in so far as the first thing about this research is that neither natural nor social sciences are fully “objective” or “unbiased”, science is a social practice and is done in a social context, the context of discovery and the context of justification cannot be separated in this methodology, who speaks for who is doing research are all important in feminist/post colonial research methodology; for example, when a PS as in Murshidabad is being skeptical about the question whether the girl has been raped, we can clearly see power and politics, which in terminology of research would not have the case if the victim was in a position of power emanating from class, caste, social status. My research into the lives of women/subaltern says that for the truth about their own lives the only testimony is really the victim (or if the victim is dead), her /his peers, her/his supporters and the social context at large. Feminist research is different from traditional social science in so far as it does not believe that there is any such thing as “objective research” method, that science is also a social practice and done with hegemonistic institutional context, which pervades the Police Stations, the State, the University, the Court system and thus, as Foucault shows, is enmeshed with power and politics. Hence, there is no such thing as an apolitical research, this is the essence of Feminist Methodology; event the researcher is not interest free of her or his research and what kind of material he or she chooses to portray and bring into research to validate the theory. The US universities are also part of this power, but I suppose there is a little more freedom of speech. If it is ok with the institution (Calcutta University) I shall use the Kamduni, Nadia, and Murshidabad incidents in class to portray the bias, power, and politics, inherent in not letting subaltern voices be heard. If not, then I have to accept the institutional hegemony, but will, nonetheless, prove one important point, that the State, police, courts, media are definitely not unbiased in a liberal democracy.
Posted on: Mon, 17 Jun 2013 17:32:43 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015