Analytical Activism and Contemporary discourses on Feminism

Muhammad Abdullah [email protected] Analytical Activism and Contemporary discourses on Feminism This talk aims at developing collective wisdom on streamlining/connecting feminist research in Pakistan with emerging trends in feminist scholarship: on a-hierarchical gender structures where empowerment of women is not based on disempowerment of men, re-defining of female sexuality from sexual objectification to sexual subjectification, deconstructing retrosexism, negating totalising descriptions of women to more inclusive forms of representation from ‘me-feminism’ to ‘we-feminism’, acknowledging/addressing complexity of sexual orientations—presenting sex alongside gender as social, usefulness of language and gender research in creating a just social order and developing critical awareness about social practices, co-construction of the concept of men and masculinity, merging knowing as a woman/man and knowing as a feminist/gender activist, power feminism—3rd wave— celebrating freedom, combating/negotiating antifeminist tendencies as a backlash of hegemonic feminist ideology. The entire discussion would be framed in praxis oriented poststructuralist/discursive paradigm linking it with researcher’s ongoing project on postfeminist turn in feminist flux.