The Politics of a Grassroot's Petition (Writing): a Postcolonial Feminist Practice of (Re-) reading the (Thai) State Violence

• In Event: The Hidden Silences of Disruptive Masculinities: Postcolonial Feminist Politics in a Southeast Asian Context

Abstract

My study aims to illustrate a postcolonial feminist practice of reading a grassroots’ land rights petitions which reflects the multilayers and levels of state violence. The approach of ‘revelatory reading’ (i.e. reading silence) is utilized to access the continuity (1968-2004) of Pornpet’s ‘writing back’ as ‘subaltern’, both politically and philosophically, which confirms her existence as a person, who cannot be spoken or written for by any authority, and helps create a space for understanding Thai
women’s lives from our own ground. Moreover, it challenges the hegemony of the West’s writing
(and representing) the ‘other’ (‘poor and uneducated’) Third World woman (Mohanty, 1986:337).

Presenter

• sinith sittirak, Thammasat university