Namascar Shaktini

Namascar Shaktini (born Margaret Clarice Orr; 8 January 1939) is an American academic and professor of French and comparative literature. During her time in Paris, she went by the name Margaret Stephenson.

Education She holds a PhD from the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she wrote a thesis titled The Problem of Gender and Subjectivity Posed by the New Subject Pronoun "j/e" in the Writing of Monique Wittig.

Activism Shaktini played a key role in the founding of the Mouvement de libération des femmes (MLF) while conducting her doctoral research in Paris under the supervision of Roland Barthes .

In August 1970, she participated in the Laying of flowers for the wife of the Unknown Soldier and was arrested by the police.

Publications

Edited collections

On Monique Wittig: Theoretical, Political, and Literary Essays, Urbana and Chicago, University of Illinois Press, 2005. (Ed. Namascar Shaktini).

Chapters

"Introduction to 'For a Women’s Liberation Movement'", in On Monique Wittig: Theoretical, Political, and Litterary Essays, Urbana and Chicago, University of Illinois Press, 2005. (Ed. Namascar Shaktini).