Identity, Feminist Theory and Language in Women’s Studies Degree Programmes: Some Reflections on Epistemic and Social Justice

Through a study of five degree programmes, this article endeavours to argue that ‘identity’ has become crucial to defining women’s studies as a teaching, degree-granting field in the Indian context today. It traces how the field’s self-definitions have come to focus on its identity-based object of study, whether through the ‘women’s studies versus gender studies’ debates or comparisons with fields like Dalit studies. Linking these developments in women’s studies to the changing social composition of students in higher education, the article discusses how identity (focused on caste identity in the programmes under study) becomes the critical axis of academic debates in contemporary women’s studies classrooms. This is illustrated through the intense contentions in these classrooms around the object of study, the location of feminist theories, the language of the curriculum and classroom, and their ties to the privilege and marginalisation of those located in women’s studies. These debates, in turn, highlight the peculiar dilemmas faced by women’s studies due to conflations of the ideas of epistemic and social justice.