Description
This paper seeks to examine and read together the works of two unique feminist thinkers – Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain and Lata Mani – located in two distinct moments in history, registers of enquiry and, connected through their dialogical interrogation of knowledge and knowledge-making. Sakhawat Hossain, a Bengali feminist thinker in colonial India, identifies education as a site of feminist resistance and emancipation, critical to forming our feminist consciousness. Mani, a feminist historian and cultural critic of our times, brings together secular and contemplative thoughts to disrupt, sharpen and soften our feminist consciousness building process. In bringing these two thinkers together (but not necessarily in agreement), I hope to closely engage with two simultaneous and sometimes conflicting ideas of ‘education’ and ‘knowledge’ through their world making characteristics and, the productive tensions they generate.
