Next Week: (Re)Inventing Feminism within the Discourse of Class Struggle

This week, the Center for the History of Women Philosophers and Scientists was delighted to welcome Manaswini Sen, Assistant Professor in the Department of History at SRM University AP, India. The team gathered for a warm welcome and engaging first exchange about her research on women’s intellectual history and global labor movements.

Sen will give a talk in our Research Colloquium next week, where she will present her recent paper published in the Journal of the History of Women Philosophers and Scientists (Vol. 3, 2024, pp. 198–222) with the title: (Re)Inventing Feminism within the Discourse of Class Struggle: Women and Intellectual History in the Trade Union Movement of Late Colonial Bengal (1920–1947).

This paper envisages (re)constructing the intellectual praxis of women trade unionists in late colonial Bengal. By arguing how political practice habitually translates to political thought, the paper devises a methodology to address the gendered discourse of intellectual history in the Global South. It focuses on intellectual output, primarily journal articles of women trade unionists like Santoshi Kumari Gupta, Maitreyee Bose, and Kanak Mukherjee, to trace a genealogy of how class struggle was perceived by women labour activists across the ideological spectrum of nationalism, socialism, and communism between 1920 to 1947 in Bengal. The piece is an effort to transcend the manifold marginalisations that plague the establishment of feminine political praxis within the regulating structures of colonialism and capitalism. In the process, it bids to unfold an alternative narrative of the anti-colonial, anti-capitalist, and anti-patriarchal narrative of the decolonisation of South Asian intellectual thought.

Are you interested in contributing to a non-themed issue in the Journal of the History of Women Philosophers and Scientists? 

The Journal of the History of Women Philosophers and Scientists (JHWPS) is pleased to invite submissions for a non-themed issue. Invited are submissions that engage with original topics on women philosophers and women’s studies.

More information here: https://brill.com/view/journals/jhwp/jhwp-overview.xml?contents=editorialContent-133826