Regenerative Ruptures and Alliances in Feminist Narratives from the Global South

Feminist struggles within human rights movements are marked by various fractures and contestations, particularly those emerging from the Global South. Their sites of alliance are layered, and often exceed mainstream, liberal feminist formulations. In this article, we unpack the limitations of dominant representations of feminist grassroot struggles, particularly within two different postcolonial locations. We look at state-led and grass-root responses to sexual harassment during the 2011 Egyptian uprising, while we examine state subjectivities that are formed through grass-root responses to the Citizenship Amendment Act in 2019, India. By interweaving both these locations, we assess the effects of the colonial encounter in shaping postcolonial subjectivities and the desire to assimilate their heterogeneity into a predetermined citizen-subject of nation states. Through critical feminist critiques of subjectivity and agency and work on radical care, we bring in conversation the post-colonial subjects with each other and with the movements they strategically oppose and align with in this overarching idiom of the nation-state. In doing this, we analyse the sites and modes of grassroot, postcolonial feminist movements, contestations and alliances.