Textual practice as intersectional practice : situated caste and gender knowledge in India

Nayak, S; Rekha, S

Abstract

Literary texts are marked with multi-layered, interdependent sensibilities that challenge binary positions of social conditioning. Literary texts, both in terms of composition and content are intersectional. Thus, the practice of writing and reading literary text is a practice of intersectionality, opening up questions about the politics of knowledge production that correspond with unequal intersecting power relations. If, as ‘social beings, women [and clients of social services] are constructed through effects of language and representation’ De Lauretis, 1984: 14), then, the role of text in this construction is rudimentary to intersectionality. Using the lens of intersectionality to think about the production and analysis of literary texts in terms of social work has both an international reach and holds the specificity of diverse social work practice contexts. This analysis of intersectionality, reaching across India and the UK, intersects a diversity of disciplinary fields including, social work, Black feminism and literary textual analysis, and as such, both the content and the method are intersectional. In the spirit of the Black feminist theory of intersectionality, this transgression of geographical and disciplinary borders reflects intersectionality as a theory of the deconstruction of borders (Nayak, 2015: 101 -103).

Citation

Nayak, S., & Rekha, S. (2018). Textual practice as intersectional practice : situated caste and gender knowledge in India. In S. Nayak, & R. Robbins (Eds.), Intersectionality in Social Work : Activism and Practice in Context (9-22). Abingdon: Routledge

• Online Publication Date: Sep 3, 2018
• Publication Date: Aug 23, 2018
• Deposit Date: Sep 7, 2018
• Publicly Available Date: Feb 23, 2020
• Publisher: Routledge
• Pages: 9-22
• Series Title: Routledge advances in Social Work
• Book Title: Intersectionality in Social Work : Activism and Practice in Context
• ISBN: 9781315210810
• Publisher URL: https://www.routledge.com/Intersectionality-in-Social-Work-Activism-and-Practice-in-Context/Nayak-Robbins/p/book/9781138628168
• Related Public URLs: https://www.routledge.com/