![handle is hein.journals/femlst20 and id is 1 raw text is: Fern Leg Stud (2012) 20:1-20
DOI 10.1007/s10691-012-9193-x
Pink Chaddis and SlutWalk Couture: The Postcolonial
Politics of Feminism Lite
Ratna Kapur
Published online: 28 March 2012
© Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012
Abstract The SlutWalk campaigns around the world have triggered a furious
debate on whether they advance or limit feminist legal politics. This article
examines the location of campaigns such as the SlutWalk marches in the context of
feminist legal advocacy in postcolonial India, and discusses whether their emer-
gence signifies the demise of feminism or its incarnation in a different guise. The
author argues that the SlutWalks, much like the Pink Chaddi (panty) campaign in
India, provide an important normative and discursive challenge to a specific strand
of feminism based on male domination and female subordination in the area of
sexuality and also speaks to the emergence of consumer agency in the very heart
of pleasure in the neo-liberal moment. It serves as a space clearing gesture, a form
of feminism 'lite', rather than offering a transformative or revolutionary politics,
and thus enables the possibility of feminist theoretical positions in a postcolonial
context that have hitherto been marginalised or ignored in feminist legal advocacy
in India to emerge.
Keywords SlutWalk - Pink Chaddi Consumer agency - Dominance feminism
Feminist critique - Postcolonial India Feminist legal advocacy - Feminism 'lite'
Introduction
People are turning out to be more fashionable ....all these things they provoke;
provoke these types of things [rape] which are not in the control of the police....
R. Kapur (E)
Geneva School of Diplomacy and International Relations, Chateau de Penthes,
18, Chemin de L'Imp6ratrice, Pregny, 1292 Geneva, Switzerland
e-mail: r.kapur@genevadiplomacy.com; rkcflr@gmail.com
R. Kapur
Jindal Global Law School, Sonepat, NCR Delhi, India
I_ Springer](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/femlst20&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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