Race, Constitution & Kink

edited by Party Office
designed by Reishabh Kailey

Constitution performs the role of asserting Nation-state onto a land and its people. Only few fight for Nation-state to be completely dismantled and to disempower the settlers. Those who find recognition within Constitution, or consider that the society has been deeply shaped by such institutions, and those whose communities have found ways to empower and affirm themselves through Constitutional rights, consider that freedom lies in judicial advocacy.

Article 21 of the UN’s 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that “The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of the government”. If this means that the electoral vote is people’s will, then lately we’ve only been settling for “the lesser evil”, and decisions have been made without the consent of communities directly affected by them.

Party Office and After Party Collective invite artists/organizers/kinksters to think about the relations between the Body and the Constitution. We think about our positionality, desires, and their relations to the constitutional and legal systems we get placed within, and if they affirm us or not. Participants are from different global locations, doing anti-racism work, anti-caste work, organizing and thinking of Indigenous rights, Trans rights, feminisms, BDSM, Sex Work, and more. The conversation and publication pushes to articulate these relations through the subjectivities of Kink.

Paperback | 7.25″ x 9″ | 72 pages | Printed Naveen Printers, New Delhi | 2022

Party Office is an anti-caste, anti-racist, trans*feminist art and social space in New Delhi, India, which also operates at satellite locations and conceptual architecture. Through publications, grants, radical archives, conversations of life lived, social gatherings, parties, and more, they are building translation dialogues on empathetic futures, care communities, and radical agency.