ABSTRACT
Against the background of mainstream academic disciplines, this chapter examines the significance of engaged feminist research. Discussing the devaluation of emotion, women’s work and experiences within Plato’s oeuvre, the author indicates flawed philosophical foundations, with biased gender constructs which carried forward, picked up strength during the European Enlightenment and found their way into positivist science as well as the humanities. Foregrounding critical feminist thought, Mehrotra explores possibilities of reconstructing knowledge, in authentic, meaningful ways. She adopts a self-reflexive mode to instantiate use of feminist epistemologies and methodologies across disciplinary boundaries. A diverse set of women’s voices, ideas and lifestories is introduced, ranging across political activism, theatre histories, traditional midwifery, single mothers and non-conventional work choices, within contemporary Indian contexts. Arguing that academic institutions remain elitist spaces of ossified privilege, entrenched patriarchies and exclusivist norms, the author notes that the task of refashioning human knowledge, in harmony with intersectional feminist politics and ethics, demands thoughtful engagement with the present and a re-visioning and rescripting of the future, both within and outside the academy.
