Gender and the Politics of Intellectualism: Archiving ‘Ma‐Periodicals’ in Kerala

ABSTRACT

The noetic and affective practices around ‘culturing’ the women of Kerala, South India, and the curation of their sensibilities according to hegemonic social codes, render it difficult to access various archival resources that would shed light on what constitutes ‘women's genres’ in the region. This article attempts to understand how gendered assumptions mediate archival policies in the state by charting the relationship between women's consumption practices, the ideology of taste and the politics of intellectualism in Kerala. By problematising the absence of Ma‐periodicals such as Manorama, Mangalam and Manorajyam from the public archives, this study argues that archival policies in the state are influenced by class‐ed and gendered prejudices. Thus, the objective is to comprehend how knowledge that merits revisiting in the state is constituted. Here, insight into the rationale behind archival policies is gained through interviews with the librarians of various university libraries and public libraries in the state. The article also attempts to understand the cultural value associated with Ma‐periodicals and their intended readers by situating them within the region's socio‐cultural discourses so as to parse the archival worth of these materials.