From feminist pedagogies to critical approaches, teaching strategies and learning methods, we look at pedagogy as a living, breathing organism shaping learners’ abilities to take constructive action.
I once taught a girl whose laughter made me think of falling water on stones. I recall the sound of it as clearly as I recall how often and how willingly she told me jokes. On the day her friends left on a trip, I asked her, ‘Priskilla, why didn’t you go to Bali?’ She said, ‘Ma’am, my purse was khaali.’
This is Part II of a series on the psyche and sexuality, based on the author’s research, reflections and analysis. The series explains key psychoanalytic concepts and offers pedagogical possibilities while working on sexuality.
Yummy yuckiness is the stuff of life. Allowing the bewilderment around it to bubble up matters. Alongside recognition, the exploration of why pleasure and danger are so mixed up also matters. While sharing why I think this exploration is important, I’d like to begin with my own experiences.
A day that is ordinary? A day within the everyday? Feminists have theorised the everyday extensively. Everyday is when the doing happens. The work is done. The cooking, the editing of the draft, the googling, the waiting for the eggs to boil, legwork, emails, paying of bills, waiting with the camera as the time lapse happens, finding the letters for that one word in Rathi, having a drink with a Tharu brewer in Chitwan. All of these are the doing. The Act of Doing, the critical step before making.
In November 2021, a group of eleven women found themselves sitting together in a room in Indore, Madhya Pradesh. Three of us (Anushi, Ekta and Angarika) had traveled from Bangalore, and the rest from different parts of Madhya Pradesh. There was a nervous energy in the room. “Why do you think we’ve all come here?”
Prisons are taken for granted within ‘civilised’ societies; we often do not think of the what and why of the institution. Often, we find ourselves at one of three points on a continuum: being oblivious and uninterested, feeling secure in knowing that there is a prison, or being concerned about the people who reach prison.
“Is deterrence of crime a valid end of justice, and therefore a valid measure of punishment?… Which is the crime whose deterrence one is talking about? To say that punitive justice may validly seek to deter rape is at least a sensible proposition.”
In 2022, the theme for Pakistan’s annual Aurat March was Reimagining Justice. The manifesto highlighted failures of the criminal justice system, and emphasised the need to build a “feminist culture of care that looks beyond the individual to address structural violence”. The word ‘care’ it said, needs to be “decoupled from stereotypical understandings of feminine traits and envisioned as collective responsibility”.
It is 10 years since I made my last documentary, many people ask me, when are you making another film? And to some I answer truthfully, that according to me, Agents of Ishq (AOI) is also a film, a very lengthy film—an infinite film.
At the beginning of 2022, I was still a student. Just along the fag end of that identity. At the end of 2022, I was a teacher. On a lot of days, I feel a bit trivial.
