But the difficulty or the challenge is to make the students move beyond the tendency to see the text as a simple reflection of social reality. We don't really want to have this kind of simplistic reading.Had reading feminist literature changed the way you read literature? Yes, it did. It emphatically did. It was my first exposure to the theoretical approach to literature. I can still remember the reading group discussions on the difference between the feminist critics and gynocritics, terms coined by Elaine Showalter. Feminist theories for me opened up the ways to link my life to the politics of reading. I began to see reading as a politics which I never thought of before. And that for me was absolutely groundbreaking.
Tell us a little about teaching feminism in the literature classroom.That's interesting. My students now are really interested in feminism. They want to read texts from a feminist perspective. So in a way you don't have to teach them how to approach a text from a feminist perspective -- it's already there. But the difficulty or the challenge is to make the students move beyond the tendency to see the text as a simple reflection of social reality. We don't really want to have this kind of simplistic reading. So, it is important to use some theoretical material to understand textual representation. And in this sense, I think Judith Butler's Gender Trouble and Bodies that Matter are texts that students can very easily relate to because they theorise gender identity. Butler provides very firm grounding to understand both identity and resistance.
There was a famous conference in Britain that was called Beyond the Fragments that was held in Leeds in1980 where feminists gathered together to talk about how feminism could include marginalised and oppressed groups of women that fell outside the frame of feminism as it was then conceivedWhere do you see the future of feminist politics is headed? That's really a very good question. I think feminist politics means different things in different countries and contexts. It means different things to different people. In 1980 everyone in Britain was talking about the fragmentation of feminist politics. There was a famous conference in Britain that was called Beyond the Fragments that was held in Leeds in1980 where feminists gathered together to talk about how feminism could include marginalised and oppressed groups of women that fell outside the frame of feminism as it was then conceived. That conference really marked the challenge to white middle-class feminist politics in the UK. What really is interesting, as I have found it in the last five years or so, is the strong comeback of feminism particularly among young women. They have a strong feeling that the changes in society are not good enough, such feelings are coming through in a number of ways. Young women see that attitude towards sexual violence and rape against women have not changed. They are very anxious about it. They are angry and I think they use social media, tweeter, Facebook and there are a huge number of online feminist publications, such as Jezebel, that feature very serious issues that women face every day.You are talking about the relationship between feminism and social media as well as popular media. Where do you think the relationship between feminism and literature stands now? I still think that feminists read and value literature. Our interest in literature, our interest to know the other world has not gone away, but feminist theory is no longer grounded in literature, as it was in the Second Wave Feminism. It has moved into a different direction. Intersectional feminism, grounded in social justice, is now the focus. Young women are massively aware of the fact that even societies and cultures that seem liberal such as that of America also have serious practices of misogyny. Young women are turning to feminist activism because they really want to see positive changes in society.You came to Bangladesh to attend a conference on gender. How do you feel about it? The conference to me is particularly important on two counts. One is to realise how important fiction actually still is. People are talking about films but people are talking a lot about novels and fiction too. Young women and, even in some cases, young men are very fired up by the books that they are reading. It was really interesting to find that feminism is very much alive in the discussions. I don't think there is any future without feminism, and young people in Bangladesh may see their future through feminism.
Dr Rifat Mahbub is an Assistant Professor at the Department of English and Humanities, BRAC University.
