ABSTRACT
From Kumari Jayawardena’s historical survey of Feminism and Nationalism in the the Third World (1986) to more specific articles like Anne McClintock’s “Women and Nationalism in South Africa” (1991),1 nationalism and national liberation movements continue to be criticized for their failure to serve women’s needs. In his contribution to the recent collection Nationalisms and Sexualities (1992), R.Radakrishnan puts a series of theoretical questions that flow from this failure:
Why is it that the advent of the politics of nationalism signals the subordination if not the demise of women’s politics?… Why could not the two be coordinated in an equal and dialogic relationship of mutual accountability? What factors constitute the normative criteria by which a question or issue is deemed “political”?… Is it inevitable that one of these politics must form the horizon for the other, or is it possible that the very notion of a containing horizon is quite beside the point?2
