Muddying the Waters: Coauthoring Feminisms across Scholarship and Activism

Dissident Feminisms

by Richa Nagar

In Muddying the Waters , Richa Nagar embarks on an eloquent and moving exploration of the promises and pitfalls she has encountered during her two decades of transnational feminist work. With stories, encounters, and anecdotes as well as methodological reflections, Nagar grapples with the complexity of working through solidarities, responsibility, and ethics while involved in politically engaged scholarship. Experiences that range from the streets of Dar es Salaam to farms and development offices in North India inform discussion of the labor and politics of coauthorship, translation, and genre blending in research and writing that cross multiple--and often difficult--borders. The author links the implicit assumptions, issues, and questions involved with scholarship and political action, and explores the epistemological risks and possibilities of creative research that bring these into intimate dialogue Daringly self-conscious, Muddying the Waters reveals a politically engaged researcher and writer working to become ""radically vulnerable,"" and the ways in which such radical vulnerability can allow a re-imagining of collaboration that opens up new avenues to collective dreaming and laboring across sociopolitical, geographical, linguistic, and institutional borders.

Genres: Feminism, Theory

240 pages, Paperback

First published November 19, 2014

Reviews

[Sahel's · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book, as is mentioned, is an academic memoire. It's a bundle of joyful and painful, stories, anecdotes, poems, theories and criticism that masterfully amalgamates a literary and scholarly voice. I personally believe there should not be a huge chasm between these voices, so that the both the academic and the literary (or personal) work can benefit from each other, thereby rendering more comprehensive works for readers.

Nagar does not offer a to-do list or agenda items; however she shows-not-tells the readers to be highly conscious of the stories and through their analyses open their hearts to truths involved in transnational feminist work.

[Jessica Allen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Basis for feminist fieldwork and methodologies

[Garrett Hoffman · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really feel like this is a text I will return to several times in my academic career. Interesting reflections on the intersections of academia and activism, survival in the academy and in the world, and loving across boundaries. Collaboration and what it is/means is a big theme. I'm glad i own this text.