Southeast Asia

Chronicling the historicity of Southeast Asian feminisms is made possible through recognizing that the narratives of victimhood and agency, displacement and empowerment, as these are lived out, ground thoughts and practices that are often not explicitly labeled as “feminist,” and strategically so, in the context of Southeast Asia. A two-part structure meets the double ends of what counts (as “feminism”) and who is counting (Asian feminists). The first part, “That which we label by any other name,” offers fragmentations and fissures in tradition that are effected by “third-world women” as they negotiate the boundaries of gender, nationalism, and militarism in private/public spaces. The second part, “That which we label feminism,” turns the spotlight on fragmentations and fissures in tradition that are more apparent as these are engendered by rights- and faith-based activists who inadvertently challenge the inherent secularism and, by extension, universalism of women’s human rights as espoused by transnational feminisms.