“Globalizing dissent”? Arundhati Roy, local and postcolonial feminisms in the transnational economy

Abstract

Arundhati Roy's sustained contribution to debates about feminism, postcolonialism, globalization and representation since the publication of The God of Small Things (1997), means that she has come to be seen by the British media as the public voice of India's anti‐globalization movement. Her problematic interventions concerning the impact of the current quickening of globalization processes in India position her at the intersection of global networks of information, knowledge, and fluctuating commodity values. This paper aims to evaluate Roy's interventions, specifically the effectiveness of her polemical ‘voice’, in relation to anti‐capitalist, transnational feminist practice, and her representation in the British media. Although her hyperbolic rhetorical strategies, odd appropriations and elisions at times undo the effectiveness of her argument, nevertheless these techniques also illustrate the difficulties of a speaking position that is not already subject to co‐option by the established discourses .of transcultural exchange systems.