Archives at the National Centre for Biological Sciences
Public Lecture Series
http://archives.ncbs.res.in/

Monthly talks framed around explorations in and around histories of science. Discussions by archivists, historians, teachers, journalists, scientists, artists and others.

Women’s Lives, Women’s Words
Some Thoughts on Feminism as Experience and Writing Women into History
C S Lakshmi (Ambai)

Friday, 4pm, May 17 2019
Lecture Hall-1 (Haapus), NCBS

On 17th of May 2019 an interesting event was organised by Mr. Venkat Srinivasan, an archivist at The NCBS, Bengaluru. Dr C S lakshmi was invited to give a talk on SPARROW and its work under the title Women’s Lives, Women’s Words. The talk was basically about the ways in which women get written into history and how their lived lives, literary and other narratives have countered mainstream history writing all along. The talk elaborated how generally, history, which includes lived experiences and narratives of people, politics, literature, art, performance and pedagogy, has viewed women in specific ways. The talk was given using literature, history, oral history, performance and visual resources and Dr C S Lakshmi’s own experience as a writer and archivist to illustrate the specificity of mainstream history narratives with regard to women, and counter narratives which she perceived as a feminist. The talk was interspersed with personal memories of growing up in the post-Independence decades and the values that filled women’s lives as women and how despite all odds women managed to make space for themselves in the home sphere and the public sphere. The core of the talk was about memories and recall and how making heard unheard voices was the only way to understand, reinterpret and rewrite history. The talk was accompanied by a PPT of images and words.