ABSTRACT
Women’s and gender studies works on the premise of trans- and interdisciplinarity, drawing on literature, history, psychology, philosophy, anthropology and sociology in varied ways. This process results in the redrawing of various disciplinary boundaries and consequent boundary challenges to the mapping of traditional disciplines. This is particularly so for interdisciplinary genres like memoir and autobiography, especially in their function as bodies of knowledge and as resource material for literary studies and women’s and gender studies (WGS), both of which are plural and multivalent categories. In this chapter, Meenakshi Malhotra argues that autobiography/lifewriting, especially in the case of oppressed minorities, provides a rich resource for the variegated spectrum of WGS and of literary and cultural studies. Women’s and gender studies, in turning to autobiography as a resource, draws upon/taps into new and developing fields of body studies, ethnography and similar areas which enrich its content and extend its domain. The chapter maps the interrelationship between autobiography and WGS, as it has developed in the last few decades, to suggest new directions and possibilities which revise traditional epistemologies. The author highlights this through a Dalit woman’s autobiography, whose focus on caste and gender oppression and its multiple challenges demonstrates autobiography as a politically enabling medium of writing, enriching lifewriting studies as well as the field of WGS.
