Karen Gabriel | University of Delhi (original) (raw)
Papers by Karen Gabriel
Lokmarg, 2024
Even though the Women’s Reservation Bill was passed in 2023 as the Constitution (106th Amendment)... more Even though the Women’s Reservation Bill was passed in 2023 as the Constitution (106th Amendment) Act, 2023, out of the approximately 8,360 candidates who contested in the 18th Lok Sabha elections at the national level, less than 10% of the candidates (only 800) were women. Deep-seated gender biases that discourage women from entering and staying in politics have only exacerbated under the Modi governments.
Routledge eBooks, Apr 18, 2019
Bharat Mata, Melodrama and the Mediation of the National Subject This chapter will critically exa... more Bharat Mata, Melodrama and the Mediation of the National Subject This chapter will critically examine specific dominant aspects of some familiar and iconic representations of Bharat Mata that are available in popular culture in order to analyse the politics of these icons and the discursive apparatus that they mobilize and enable. While doing this, it will offer the illustrated argument that the iconic and mythogenic figuring of the nation as Mother India/Bharat Mata, contrary to enduring assumptions about it, is, strictly speaking, not a ‘national’ or representative one at all. The figure of Bharat Mata is highly exclusive and elitist, and its claim to representativeness is in fact a function of its elitism: the elite claim to be the norm. The chapter will argue that the iconography of Bharat Mata typically invisibilises and marginalises the vast and highly heterogeneous majority. Powered by symbolism, the Bharat Mata icon renders the social hierarchies that it literally incorporates, as influential and as desirable. Furthermore, these are reinforced as normative within dominant notions of community and nation, a move that in turn promotes the social, discursive, cultural and institutional hierarchies of caste, class, religious majoritarianism, and orthodox sexual politics. While doing this, the paper will demonstrate the libidinal investment this figure, the use of melodrama, and the ways in which notions of desirability and legitimacy grid this argument.
Palgrave Macmillan UK eBooks, Dec 1, 2016
The current status of research into pornography is marked by several rather contradictory tendenc... more The current status of research into pornography is marked by several rather contradictory tendencies. On the one hand, the volume of research and writing on porn has been steadily increasing, and gaining a degree of academic acceptability within the Western academy—particularly since Linda Williams’ volume on porn, Hard Core: Power, Pleasure, and the “Frenzy of the Visible” (1989). In Eric Schaefer’s words, “she made it safe” for scholars to engage with porn “and not face the wrath of steaming administrators, snickering students, and their apoplectic parents” (2005: 8). That is, “within the field of film and media studies adult film and video is now an accepted, and legitimate, area of scholarly inquiry” (2005: 10). On the other hand, work on porn continues to be stigmatized, as Georgina Voss (2012) notes:
IGNOU eBooks, Mar 30, 2017
Norma, Jan 2, 2014
In this article I seek to re-examine the concepts ‘patriarchy’ and ‘homosociality’, individually ... more In this article I seek to re-examine the concepts ‘patriarchy’ and ‘homosociality’, individually and in relation to each other. I argue that the critical tendency to dismiss the utility of ‘patriarchy’ did not engage much with the relations of patriarchal formations to men and masculinities. The latter are shaped and determined by bonds of ‘homosociality’, which, I argue, is not necessarily to be understood as being oppositional to homosexuality or as tantamount to an implicit homoeroticism. This homosociality forms the substrate of other kinds of collective social phenomena like nationalism, caste and religious communalism, chauvinisms of various kinds, etc. It is substantially shaped by the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion that determine such collective phenomena, serving as the ‘mediating anodyne’ to the conflicts and contradictions that are often, even inevitably, thrown up in such patriarchal formations. Arguing that a central aspect of this is the relation between the erotic and the politic, I then discuss the relation of masculinity to power, within these dynamics.
IGNOU eBooks, Mar 30, 2017
IGNOU eBooks, Mar 30, 2017
SAGE Publications Ltd eBooks, 2020
The chapter offers an understanding of how to understand pornography and the field of the pornogr... more The chapter offers an understanding of how to understand pornography and the field of the pornographic
Drawing from select South Asian examples, this paper argues that pornography is an economically, ... more Drawing from select South Asian examples, this paper argues that pornography is an economically, socially and culturally significant phenomenon that must be understood as falling within the domains of representation and of commercialised sex. To ignore the understanding of it as purchased sex and as sex work, is to misread the phenomenon and to expose the already precarious and gendered labour to the risks of an unregulated workplace. It further argues that the rapid transnational spread of porn is a consequence of several factors that include the Internet boom, technological changes, convergence, capitalist entrepreneurship, and the ease with which the (sexual) labour of women is commodified and devalued. Finally, it argues that the neoliberal ethos, current economics and capitalist logic and cultures are deeply imbricated in emotional and intimate lives, and ascribe value to subject-bodies and the labour they perform. These subject-bodies also become the sites on which the tensions of intersecting identities of gender, race, class, nationality and ethnicity are staged, eroticised and sold. The understanding of porn as a liberatory phenomenon is thus, an incomplete one at best.
Crossings: Women's & Gender Studies in India, 2019
: This chapter examines the semiotic and discursive politics of iconic representations of Bharat ... more : This chapter examines the semiotic and discursive politics of iconic representations of Bharat Mata with the help of two intertwining arguments. The first of these is that the figuring of the nation in such icons is exclusive and elitist rather than inclusive and ‘national’. The second argument is that most narratives of the nation are fundamentally melodramatic. These arguments are corroborated by the careful analysis of various popular images, short stories by Mahasweta Devi and cinema. The author also shows how notions of desirability and legitimacy undergird the figuring of the nation, nationalism and patriotism in hegemonic ways. The universalizing tendencies of these dominant metaphors and discourses guarantee that certain normative notions of family, motherhood and mother nation are privileged while other actual and diverse multiplicities are excluded, revealing the anxiety that underlies the carefully constructed and ordered bodyscape of the nation-as-mother.
Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes (CHCI), 2022
This essay focuses on the ways in which critical and inclusive feminist inquiries and arguments h... more This essay focuses on the ways in which critical and inclusive feminist inquiries and arguments have come to be generated, produced, and sustained in relation to the field of the humanities in India in the past thirty-five years. It also explores the ways in which these feminist inquiries document two things: first, the knowledge systems they engage with as being partial, subjective, and hierarchical; and second, the inherently inter-, cross-, and trans- disciplinary tendencies that emerge both between and beyond the academic disciplines that constitute the field of the humanities. These inquiries may be said to document, in turn, the conditions of production of feminist discourses in and their relation to the field of the humanities in India. It therefore explores the ways in which these conditions have shaped feminist politics both within and outside academe in India.
The chapter offers an understanding of how to understand pornography and the field of the pornogr... more The chapter offers an understanding of how to understand pornography and the field of the pornographic
Gender, Sexuality & Feminism, 2013
NORMA, 2014
In this article I seek to re-examine the concepts ‘patriarchy’ and ‘homosociality’, individually ... more In this article I seek to re-examine the concepts ‘patriarchy’ and ‘homosociality’, individually and in relation to each other. I argue that the critical tendency to dismiss the utility of ‘patriarchy’ did not engage much with the relations of patriarchal formations to men and masculinities. The latter are shaped and determined by bonds of ‘homosociality’, which, I argue, is not necessarily to be understood as being oppositional to homosexuality or as tantamount to an implicit homoeroticism. This homosociality forms the substrate of other kinds of collective social phenomena like nationalism, caste and religious communalism, chauvinisms of various kinds, etc. It is substantially shaped by the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion that determine such collective phenomena, serving as the ‘mediating anodyne’ to the conflicts and contradictions that are often, even inevitably, thrown up in such patriarchal formations. Arguing that a central aspect of this is the relation between the erotic and the politic, I then discuss the relation of masculinity to power, within these dynamics.
Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 2012
This paper critically assesses the usefulness of the “new-Orientalism” thesis in understanding th... more This paper critically assesses the usefulness of the “new-Orientalism” thesis in understanding the discourses around the idea of “terrorism” and of “the terrorist”. It observes that critiques of “new Orientalism” provide important insights into the ways in which “Islam”, “the Muslim” and “terrorist” have come to be constructed. However, it also argues for the importance of the density of historical context and specificity of locality in understanding how these categories are formulated. The case of Bombay cinema is particularly instructive here. The paper argues that Bombay cinema – which has engaged with these concerns in some form since its inception, and is going “global” in unprecedented ways – exemplifies both the play of these two distinct discursive tendencies and also the tensions that arise because they are not identical. Post-9/11 films like Aamir (2008) and New York (2009) manifest these discursive mechanics and the tensions that result from the play between “new Orientalism” and the local.
Bodies in Resistance, 2016
The current status of research into pornography is marked by several rather contradictory tendenc... more The current status of research into pornography is marked by several rather contradictory tendencies. On the one hand, the volume of research and writing on porn has been steadily increasing, and gaining a degree of academic acceptability within the Western academy—particularly since Linda Williams’ volume on porn, Hard Core: Power, Pleasure, and the “Frenzy of the Visible” (1989). In Eric Schaefer’s words, “she made it safe” for scholars to engage with porn “and not face the wrath of steaming administrators, snickering students, and their apoplectic parents” (2005: 8). That is, “within the field of film and media studies adult film and video is now an accepted, and legitimate, area of scholarly inquiry” (2005: 10). On the other hand, work on porn continues to be stigmatized, as Georgina Voss (2012) notes:
Violence in South Asia, 2019
Lokmarg, 2024
Even though the Women’s Reservation Bill was passed in 2023 as the Constitution (106th Amendment)... more Even though the Women’s Reservation Bill was passed in 2023 as the Constitution (106th Amendment) Act, 2023, out of the approximately 8,360 candidates who contested in the 18th Lok Sabha elections at the national level, less than 10% of the candidates (only 800) were women. Deep-seated gender biases that discourage women from entering and staying in politics have only exacerbated under the Modi governments.
Routledge eBooks, Apr 18, 2019
Bharat Mata, Melodrama and the Mediation of the National Subject This chapter will critically exa... more Bharat Mata, Melodrama and the Mediation of the National Subject This chapter will critically examine specific dominant aspects of some familiar and iconic representations of Bharat Mata that are available in popular culture in order to analyse the politics of these icons and the discursive apparatus that they mobilize and enable. While doing this, it will offer the illustrated argument that the iconic and mythogenic figuring of the nation as Mother India/Bharat Mata, contrary to enduring assumptions about it, is, strictly speaking, not a ‘national’ or representative one at all. The figure of Bharat Mata is highly exclusive and elitist, and its claim to representativeness is in fact a function of its elitism: the elite claim to be the norm. The chapter will argue that the iconography of Bharat Mata typically invisibilises and marginalises the vast and highly heterogeneous majority. Powered by symbolism, the Bharat Mata icon renders the social hierarchies that it literally incorporates, as influential and as desirable. Furthermore, these are reinforced as normative within dominant notions of community and nation, a move that in turn promotes the social, discursive, cultural and institutional hierarchies of caste, class, religious majoritarianism, and orthodox sexual politics. While doing this, the paper will demonstrate the libidinal investment this figure, the use of melodrama, and the ways in which notions of desirability and legitimacy grid this argument.
Palgrave Macmillan UK eBooks, Dec 1, 2016
The current status of research into pornography is marked by several rather contradictory tendenc... more The current status of research into pornography is marked by several rather contradictory tendencies. On the one hand, the volume of research and writing on porn has been steadily increasing, and gaining a degree of academic acceptability within the Western academy—particularly since Linda Williams’ volume on porn, Hard Core: Power, Pleasure, and the “Frenzy of the Visible” (1989). In Eric Schaefer’s words, “she made it safe” for scholars to engage with porn “and not face the wrath of steaming administrators, snickering students, and their apoplectic parents” (2005: 8). That is, “within the field of film and media studies adult film and video is now an accepted, and legitimate, area of scholarly inquiry” (2005: 10). On the other hand, work on porn continues to be stigmatized, as Georgina Voss (2012) notes:
IGNOU eBooks, Mar 30, 2017
Norma, Jan 2, 2014
In this article I seek to re-examine the concepts ‘patriarchy’ and ‘homosociality’, individually ... more In this article I seek to re-examine the concepts ‘patriarchy’ and ‘homosociality’, individually and in relation to each other. I argue that the critical tendency to dismiss the utility of ‘patriarchy’ did not engage much with the relations of patriarchal formations to men and masculinities. The latter are shaped and determined by bonds of ‘homosociality’, which, I argue, is not necessarily to be understood as being oppositional to homosexuality or as tantamount to an implicit homoeroticism. This homosociality forms the substrate of other kinds of collective social phenomena like nationalism, caste and religious communalism, chauvinisms of various kinds, etc. It is substantially shaped by the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion that determine such collective phenomena, serving as the ‘mediating anodyne’ to the conflicts and contradictions that are often, even inevitably, thrown up in such patriarchal formations. Arguing that a central aspect of this is the relation between the erotic and the politic, I then discuss the relation of masculinity to power, within these dynamics.
IGNOU eBooks, Mar 30, 2017
IGNOU eBooks, Mar 30, 2017
SAGE Publications Ltd eBooks, 2020
The chapter offers an understanding of how to understand pornography and the field of the pornogr... more The chapter offers an understanding of how to understand pornography and the field of the pornographic
Drawing from select South Asian examples, this paper argues that pornography is an economically, ... more Drawing from select South Asian examples, this paper argues that pornography is an economically, socially and culturally significant phenomenon that must be understood as falling within the domains of representation and of commercialised sex. To ignore the understanding of it as purchased sex and as sex work, is to misread the phenomenon and to expose the already precarious and gendered labour to the risks of an unregulated workplace. It further argues that the rapid transnational spread of porn is a consequence of several factors that include the Internet boom, technological changes, convergence, capitalist entrepreneurship, and the ease with which the (sexual) labour of women is commodified and devalued. Finally, it argues that the neoliberal ethos, current economics and capitalist logic and cultures are deeply imbricated in emotional and intimate lives, and ascribe value to subject-bodies and the labour they perform. These subject-bodies also become the sites on which the tensions of intersecting identities of gender, race, class, nationality and ethnicity are staged, eroticised and sold. The understanding of porn as a liberatory phenomenon is thus, an incomplete one at best.
Crossings: Women's & Gender Studies in India, 2019
: This chapter examines the semiotic and discursive politics of iconic representations of Bharat ... more : This chapter examines the semiotic and discursive politics of iconic representations of Bharat Mata with the help of two intertwining arguments. The first of these is that the figuring of the nation in such icons is exclusive and elitist rather than inclusive and ‘national’. The second argument is that most narratives of the nation are fundamentally melodramatic. These arguments are corroborated by the careful analysis of various popular images, short stories by Mahasweta Devi and cinema. The author also shows how notions of desirability and legitimacy undergird the figuring of the nation, nationalism and patriotism in hegemonic ways. The universalizing tendencies of these dominant metaphors and discourses guarantee that certain normative notions of family, motherhood and mother nation are privileged while other actual and diverse multiplicities are excluded, revealing the anxiety that underlies the carefully constructed and ordered bodyscape of the nation-as-mother.
Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes (CHCI), 2022
This essay focuses on the ways in which critical and inclusive feminist inquiries and arguments h... more This essay focuses on the ways in which critical and inclusive feminist inquiries and arguments have come to be generated, produced, and sustained in relation to the field of the humanities in India in the past thirty-five years. It also explores the ways in which these feminist inquiries document two things: first, the knowledge systems they engage with as being partial, subjective, and hierarchical; and second, the inherently inter-, cross-, and trans- disciplinary tendencies that emerge both between and beyond the academic disciplines that constitute the field of the humanities. These inquiries may be said to document, in turn, the conditions of production of feminist discourses in and their relation to the field of the humanities in India. It therefore explores the ways in which these conditions have shaped feminist politics both within and outside academe in India.
The chapter offers an understanding of how to understand pornography and the field of the pornogr... more The chapter offers an understanding of how to understand pornography and the field of the pornographic
Gender, Sexuality & Feminism, 2013
NORMA, 2014
In this article I seek to re-examine the concepts ‘patriarchy’ and ‘homosociality’, individually ... more In this article I seek to re-examine the concepts ‘patriarchy’ and ‘homosociality’, individually and in relation to each other. I argue that the critical tendency to dismiss the utility of ‘patriarchy’ did not engage much with the relations of patriarchal formations to men and masculinities. The latter are shaped and determined by bonds of ‘homosociality’, which, I argue, is not necessarily to be understood as being oppositional to homosexuality or as tantamount to an implicit homoeroticism. This homosociality forms the substrate of other kinds of collective social phenomena like nationalism, caste and religious communalism, chauvinisms of various kinds, etc. It is substantially shaped by the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion that determine such collective phenomena, serving as the ‘mediating anodyne’ to the conflicts and contradictions that are often, even inevitably, thrown up in such patriarchal formations. Arguing that a central aspect of this is the relation between the erotic and the politic, I then discuss the relation of masculinity to power, within these dynamics.
Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 2012
This paper critically assesses the usefulness of the “new-Orientalism” thesis in understanding th... more This paper critically assesses the usefulness of the “new-Orientalism” thesis in understanding the discourses around the idea of “terrorism” and of “the terrorist”. It observes that critiques of “new Orientalism” provide important insights into the ways in which “Islam”, “the Muslim” and “terrorist” have come to be constructed. However, it also argues for the importance of the density of historical context and specificity of locality in understanding how these categories are formulated. The case of Bombay cinema is particularly instructive here. The paper argues that Bombay cinema – which has engaged with these concerns in some form since its inception, and is going “global” in unprecedented ways – exemplifies both the play of these two distinct discursive tendencies and also the tensions that arise because they are not identical. Post-9/11 films like Aamir (2008) and New York (2009) manifest these discursive mechanics and the tensions that result from the play between “new Orientalism” and the local.
Bodies in Resistance, 2016
The current status of research into pornography is marked by several rather contradictory tendenc... more The current status of research into pornography is marked by several rather contradictory tendencies. On the one hand, the volume of research and writing on porn has been steadily increasing, and gaining a degree of academic acceptability within the Western academy—particularly since Linda Williams’ volume on porn, Hard Core: Power, Pleasure, and the “Frenzy of the Visible” (1989). In Eric Schaefer’s words, “she made it safe” for scholars to engage with porn “and not face the wrath of steaming administrators, snickering students, and their apoplectic parents” (2005: 8). That is, “within the field of film and media studies adult film and video is now an accepted, and legitimate, area of scholarly inquiry” (2005: 10). On the other hand, work on porn continues to be stigmatized, as Georgina Voss (2012) notes:
Violence in South Asia, 2019
The Sage Handbook of Global Sexualities, 2020
The chapter offers an understanding of how to understand pornography and the field of the pornogr... more The chapter offers an understanding of how to understand pornography and the field of the pornographic
Women Unlimited, 2010
A book that looks at the relationship between melodrama, gender, sexuality and nationalism per se... more A book that looks at the relationship between melodrama, gender, sexuality and nationalism per se, and with reference to Hindi cinema between 1970-2000.
Table of Contents:
1. Political History, Political Economy
2. Bombay Cinema and Questions of Form
3. Towards a Theory of the Sexual Economy
4. Femininity and the Regulation of Pleasure and Desire
5. The Changing Faces of Masculinity
6. Gender, Sexuality, Nation
7. Communities and Their Others
8. Wounded Identities
The intricate and inextricable relations between gender and nation have been the focus of much de... more The intricate and inextricable relations between gender and nation have been the focus of much debate in recent times. Particularly in the context of postcolonial societies, narratives of the nation have engaged with reformulations of gender relations and scripts as these inflect ‘national’ identity. This presentation will examine some contemporary popular commercial fiction in Indian writing in English as it explores some of the ways in which gender and nation are formulated and narrated–separately and together–in them. While doing this, it will explore in particular the dynamics of the many rightwing tendencies that have emerged recently. It will think about the ways in which gender has been a crucial site and subject of attention during the emergence and consolidation of these economic, socio-political and cultural tendencies. It will thereby reflect on the ways in which the mythologies of gender intersect with the mythologies of the nation at this juncture in contemporary IWE, particularly in the writings of Amish Tripathi.
National Taiwan University, 2022
Final schedule for the Obscenity! Blasphemy! Treason! An Interdisciplinary International Confere... more Final schedule for the Obscenity! Blasphemy! Treason! An Interdisciplinary International Conference on Censorship (淫穢！褻瀆！叛國！審查制度跨域國際會議)
Held March 3–5, 2022, Online
Hosted by Dr L. Acadia, Department of Foreign Languages and Literature,
National Taiwan University, with funding from the Taiwan Ministry of Science and Technology.
Organizing Committee: Dr Santiago Juan-Navarro (Florida International University) and Dr Greg Simons (Uppsala University).
Keynote: “Why Ban Books?” by Dr Emily Knox (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
Plenary: “Living with Covid from/and China: A Taiwanese Immigrant on Endgames” by Prof. Sheng-mei Ma (Michigan State University)