Women's Theater and the Redefinitions of Public, Private, and Politics in North India 1 (original) (raw)

A bstr act T his e ssay explore s the inte rse ctions be twe en pe rf ormanc e, ma te ria lity, a nd mar ginaliz e d women's struggles by de lving into the me anings of public a nd pr ivate , and the nua nc e d and var ied me anings of gende r ed r e sista nc e. Foc using on thre e ver y dif fe r ent kinds of the atric al pe rf or mance s by w omen in N orth I ndia , I a na lyz e how e ac h per f or ma nce a ppropriate s, c omplic ates, or r einf orc es the inter w oven pa tr iar cha l conce pts of public a nd priva te on the one ha nd, a nd f e mininity a nd ma sc ulinity on the other . In so doing, I also c onsider how both spa ce a nd kinship ar e str ate gica lly de ploye d in these per f or ma nce s, and the diff er e nt me anings of re sista nc e a nd fe minist politics e mbe dde d and implie d in ea c h per for ma nc e . I argue that a focus on these processes allows us to grapple with the ways in which gendered materialities -shaped by class, caste, and geographical locationbecome central to the articulation of politics. This framework opens up new "spaces" to examine how multiple publics are constituted and reconfigured in terms of their sociopolitical identities and provisional alliances in and through publicization/privatization struggles, without essentializing or fixing the meanings of either public or private or of the spaces in which public/private acts are enacted.