Review: Shaping the Discourse

Review of Ipsita Chanda and Jayeeta Bagchi (eds.) Shaping the Discourse: Women’s Writings in Bengali Periodicals: 1865-1947 by Epshita Halder

 "Threading together possibilities of an ongoing multi-layered and multi-textured social conversation on women’s issues within a period that spans decades"

Stree, 2013
ISBNs 978-81-906760-5-2;
81-906760-6-9

...[T]he collection neither presumes the absence of the slips between discourse and practice nor a relative autonomy, it does try to conceptualize gender at multiple levels—personal identity, principle of organization of social structures and basis of normative value(s). In their bid to chart out a ‘literary history’ of gender as a category, the editors have tried to show how this category is constructed through belief, reason and emotion, expressed through a particular genre and medium. Threading together possibilities of an ongoing multi-layered and multi-textured social conversation on women’s issues within a period that spans decades, the articles help readers trace the dynamics of change in positions and strategies on women’s education, child marriage, widow remarriage, seclusion, ‘reform’, self-help, patriotism and its practice and so on....

Read full review in Kindle Magazine (July 2014 Issue) visit: http://kindlemag.in/shaping-writings-bengali-periodicals/

For more information visit: http://stree-samyabooks.blogspot.in/2013_12_01_archive.html