The Politics of Presence: Loitering, Affect, and Reclaiming Urban Public Space in Post-Nirbhaya India

Abstract

This paper examines how women’s engagement with Indian urban spaces shifted following the 2012 Nirbhaya case, moving from a discourse of state-mandated “safety” to an elective “politics of presence”. By analysing Shilpa Phadke, Sameera Khan and Shilpa Ranade’s Why Loiter?, Maya Krishna Rao’s " Performance Walk, and Blank Noise’s “Meet to Sleep” campaign, this study explores how the simple acts of walking, sitting, and sleeping in public become potent forms of resistance. While the Nirbhaya case intensified a culture of fear and restrictive “safety” narratives, these selected texts and performances champion the right to loiter without purpose. Utilising Sara Ahmed’s affect theory and Lauren Berlant’s “crisis ordinariness,” the methodology employs close reading and performance analysis to argue that reclaiming the city is not merely a legal or infrastructural issue but an affective one. The findings suggest that by embracing pleasure and risk over survivalist caution, these acts of “ordinary freedom” challenge the systemic gendered boundaries of the Indian metropole.