Interconnections and tensions between postcolonialism and feminism in South Asian women poets: the case of Meena Alexander, Suniti Namjoshi and Imtiaz Dharker

This study focuses on the relationship between postcolonialism and feminism in the work of three poets stemming from the Indian subcontinent: Meena Alexander, Suniti Namjoshi and Imtiaz Dharker. These three writers investigate the conflicts involved in positioning themselves as writers of colour in a world dominated by white writers, something that is amplified by their complex personal geography involving multiple dislocations. Always straddling different cultures sometimes in conflict one with the other, these writers are particularly well-suited to discuss the intersections between different axes - of gender, geographical provenance, religion, sexuality, and so on - along which the experience of women's writing is located. Poetry, with its ambiguities and linguistic flexibility, is for these writers a particularly incisive means to investigate an inner self rich in questions and conflicts.