Existing literature on gender and feminist geography in India has discussed the growth and concerns of the sub-discipline. The frontlines wherefrom this geographical knowledge is produced may also be traced along the fringes of classrooms, recreational spaces and residential complexes within higher education institutes in India. While these spaces are keenly projected as ‘universitarian’ images, they are meshed with unequal gender and caste relations often inconspicuous within these institutes. These power asymmetries (un)knowingly create hegemonies of knowledge, prejudices and preferences in the system of geographical knowledge production within higher education institutes in India. Thus making these spaces acquire a competitive nature rather than collegial practice. Taking up space as an emerging scholar and doing gender and feminist geographies within these contexts in higher education institutes, as a woman of colour, from a cultural and religious minority community in India, is challenging. Scholars of gender and feminist geography are often on the receiving end of banter, infantilization, teasing, disciplining, taming and moral policing within these androcentric spaces. Further, these acts are meted out to appease hegemonic culture and geographical knowledge systems which are at odds with the praxis of feminist geography. Also, the persistent need to justify using feminist themes and methodologies as legitimate ways of doing geographical research in India is another obstacle. In this paper, by adopting an auto-ethnographical approach, I draw attention to the optics of doing gender and feminist geography as a doctoral scholar in a higher education institute in India. This reflexive account also explores the crucial role of feminist mentoring, allyship and peer groups in emboldening scholars to pursue research in gender and feminist geographies within Indian contexts.
Mots clés : Feminist Geography|India|hegemonies of knowledge|gender|higher education
A103225MF