Revolutionizing Agency: Sameness and Difference in the Representation of Women by Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain and Mahasweta Devi
Revolutionizing Agency: Sameness and Difference in the Representation of Women by Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain and Mahasweta Devi

Summary/Abstract: In this paper the sameness and difference between two distinguished Indian authors, Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain (1880-1932) and Mahasweta Devi (b. 1926), representing two generations almost a cuntury apart, will be under analysis in order to trace the generational transformation in women's writing in India, especially Bengal. Situated in the colonial and postcolonial frames of history, Hossain and Mahasweta Devi may be contextualized differently. At the same time their subjects are also differently catagorized; the former is not particulary concerned with subalternes whereas the latter specifically focuses on the effect of race and class and gender. The quest for the 'self' and 'subjectivity' is more pertinent in the latter and consequently the appeal for agency is based on a crude power struggle. Hossain, a philantropist who championed the woman question, believed that striving for equality should be a collective process which could be achieved by spreading awareness among fellow-inmates inhabiting the prison of patriarchy. (...)

• Details
• Contents