Feminisms, Collaborations, Friendships: A Conversation

• Published in: Feminist studies 2016, Vol.42 (2), p.502-519
• Main Author: Nagar, Richa
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Alliances; Authors; Collaboration; College students; Conversation; Cultural groups; Culture; Feminism; Feminist literary theory; Friendship; Friendships; Indian literature; Joint authorship; Knowledge; Life after death; Literary criticism; Literary translation; Political activism; Political movements; Politics; Radicalism; Seeds; Social cohesion; Transnationalism; Turkish language; Writers; Writing
• ISSN: 0046-3663; 2153-3873
• DOI: 10.15767/feministstudies.42.2.0502

This conversation with Richa Nagar about feminist friendships and co-authorships emerged from a collaborative interview as a way to resist individualism, career-centric-orientations and academic-stardom; themes that are prominent in the interview itself. The conversation explores the process of collaborative writing, how it challenges hegemonic modes of knowledge production, and what types of relationships sustain such an engagement, based on Richa’s experiences in collectively writingPlaying with Fire: Feminist Thought and Activism Through Seven Lives in Indiawith theSangtin Writers Collective. The conversation foregrounds the significance of deep relationality in defining situated solidarities, transnational feminist collaborations, and the meanings and possibilities of co-authorship, and sparked new conversations about each of our journeys as activists, intellectuals, and immigrants who lived multiple, and often bi-national, political lives. This conversation is chiefly an elaboration on the theme of feminist friendships, trust, and radical vulnerability that allows collective writing to navigate the hierarchies of knowledge production and the publication industry. The ideas about ‘co-authorship,’ 'collaboration,' and ‘friendship’ that Richa Nagar articulates throughout this interview allowed us to think about friendship as radical vulnerability and has unsettled our notion of friendship, feminist cooperation, and intimacy and made us acutely aware of the multifarious sites of power and creativity within academic and activist spaces alike, as well as our positions and relationships within these domains.