Friends, colleagues, please join us for the August instalment of our Deakin Anthropology Seminar Series 2018, presented by Deakin’s own Dr Yamini Narayanan. The seminar will be followed by drinks at The Edge, 6/8 Eastern Beach Rd, Geelong.

 

Date: Thursday 2 August
Time: 4:00-5:30pm
Location: Deakin Waterfront AD1.122

(Also, by videoconference, at Deakin Burwood F2.009, Deakin Downtown, and VMP ARTSED SHSS 39354)

 

Cow is a Mother, Mothers Can Do Anything for Their Children: Gaushalas as Landscapes of Anthropatriarchy and Hindu Patriarchy

This paper argues that gaushalas, or cow shelters, in India are mobilised as sites of Hindutva or Hindu ultranationalism, where it is a ‘vulnerable’ Hindu Indian nation – or the ‘Hindu mother cow’ as Mother India – ­ who needs ‘sanctuary’ from predatory Muslim males.  Through empirical research, this paper demonstrates that gaushalas generally function as spaces of exploitation, incarceration, and gendered violence for the animals. The paper broadens posthumanist feminist theory to illustrate how bovine bodies, akin to women’s bodies, are mobilised as productive, reproductive, and symbolic capital to advance Hindu extremism and ultranationalism. It subjectifies animal bodies as landscapes of nation-(un)making using eco-feminism and its sub-field of vegan feminism.

 

Biography

Dr. Yamini Narayanan is Senior Lecturer in International and Community Development. Her work is focussed on two major themes: the nexus between animals and urban planning in India; and the intersections of speciesism, casteism and racism in the ways in which animals are enrolled in nation-building projects. Her forthcoming book will offer one of the first empirical critiques of India’s cow protectionism discourse and politics from a critical animal studies standpoint, examining bovine realities in both sites of production and protection.