Muddying the Waters

In Muddying the Waters, Richa Nagar embarks on an eloquent and moving exploration of the promises and pitfalls she has encountered during her two decades of transnational feminist work. With stories, encounters, and anecdotes as well as methodological reflections, Nagar grapples with the complexity of working through solidarities, responsibility, and ethics while involved in politically engaged scholarship. Experiences that range from the streets of Dar es Salaam to farms and development offices in North India inform discussion of the labor and politics of coauthorship, translation, and genre blending in research and writing that cross multiple--and often difficult--borders. The author links the implicit assumptions, issues, and questions involved with scholarship and political action, and explores the epistemological risks and possibilities of creative research that bring these into intimate dialogue

Daringly self-conscious, Muddying the Waters reveals a politically engaged researcher and writer working to become “radically vulnerable,” and the ways in which such radical vulnerability can allow a re-imagining of collaboration that opens up new avenues to collective dreaming and laboring across sociopolitical, geographical, linguistic, and institutional borders.