(Un)veiling Desire: Re-defining relationships between gendered adult education subjects and adult education programmes

This paper challenges constructions of the ‘gendered illiterate Indian villager’ as a homogenous group of people who are empowered through acquiring literacy. I strive to displace homogeneous representations of gendered ‘illiterate’ subjects through ethnographic accounts of diverse people's realities in different villages in Bihar, India. I argue that the circumstance under which a relationship between gendered adult education subjects and adult education programmes gets constructed impinges on notions of: norms, interpreting and translating Others, networks and empowerment within and outside the context of adult education programmes.

► Adult education subjects are not ‘empowered’ through literacy. ► Interpreting and translating Others (de)constructs ‘empowered’ subjects. ► Material realities are (un)transformed through networks and norms. ► Empowerment is a process of adopting postures of autonomy.