Once Upon a Time Called Now: Re-forming Woman, Re-shaping the Present

abstract: Contending that it is important not only to study the re-formation of woman during tumultuous times, but also to ask paradigmatic questions about the hyper-anxiety surrounding woman during such times, this article turns attention to women's magazines in Malayalam that emerged in the early twentieth century. It demonstrates that debates which sought to frenetically reform woman were not merely occurrences in time but also ways of rendering an "anachronous present"—a shape-shifting temporality that tangled together the historical, everyday, speculative, civilizational, literary, and mythological. This article unpacks how the anachronous present becomes a site for managing conflicts and convening a new, participative social order, before going on to outline some of the implications of this project.