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Framing the Postcolonial Sexual Contract: Democracy, Fraternalism, and State Authority in India

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2020

Abstract

This essay examines the reconfiguration of the racial and sexual contracts underpinning democratic theory and practice in the transition to independence in India. Drawing upon the work of Carole Pateman and Charles Mills, Keating argues that the racialized fraternal democratic order that they describe was importantly challenged by nationalist and feminist struggles against colonialism in India, but was reshaped into what she calls a postcolonial sexual contract by the framers of the Indian Constitution.

Type
Feminist Interventions in Democratic Theory
Copyright
Copyright © 2007 by Hypatia, Inc.

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