Making (and enduring) feminist relations

This essay reviews Srila Roy's (2022) Changing the Subject. It notes the multiple dimensions along which she articulates feminist and queer politics in two organizations in West Bengal, India, including scale, space, and generation. Feminism and queer politics are co-constituted from the Global South, across rural and urban relations, and through older and younger generations of activism. By examining two sites of the constitution of feminist and queer politics, she shows how “queer feminist governmentalities” and processes of subjectification emerge and entangle in different ways. The review goes on to ask several questions about understandings of the political. Finally, I engage her conclusions around critique as care. Roy's book offers a rich ethnographic contribution to debates over politics in neoliberal times.