Dark Looks: Sensory Contours of Racism in India

This chapter explores the intersections of caste, color, and class that become visible on the bodies of brown and black women moving through public spaces in India. The authors argue that a pervasive “haptic gaze,” that deploys staring as a prosthetic of touch, informs the varied registers of violence sensed and felt by different women. Drawing from Dalit and Black feminist theories, the authors draw a conceptual map of relations between caste-based patriarchy and anti-blackness, furthering an understanding of intersectional identities as shifting, fluid, and locational, specifically in relation to the global south.