The Politics of Anthologizing Women’s Writing from India: The Role of Translation

Abstract

This paper explores the emergence of an Indian Literature across various periods of Indian history, and the dependence of this national literature upon the anthology form. It investigates how the politics of the anthology form, specifically those of women’s writing, are closely linked to the politics of gender and nationalism, paying close attention to the exclusions and inequalities that are produced by homogenized notions of Indianness and Indian Literature. Through a comparative analysis of three selected anthologies of women’s writing, I analyze how texts are selected for anthologizing, how the anthology is arranged and narrativized, how the reader’s reception of the text is guided through its formal aspects, and how much space is given to translation and translators. The crucial role of translation in the production of such anthologies is underlined throughout the paper, and I contend that feminist translation praxis could be a viable method and approach to intervene in the socio-literary sphere of gender and nationalism.