Past matters: Queer contestations of colonial masculinity in Leslie de Noronha’s The Dew Drop Inn and Shyam Selvadurai’s Cinnamon Gardens (original) (raw)
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Commonwealth Essays and Studies, 2019
In this essay, I offer a queer reading of two works of the postcolonial canon from South Asia to ask what alternative meanings emerge when ethnic, religious, cultural and national matrices are brought to bear upon queer epistemology. Exploring the interconnections between queer adolescence, revolutions and postcoloniality, I disturb neat narratives of postcolonial modernity to suggest the reorientation of South Asian fiction as a crucial outcome of the crossings.
Fractured Resistance: Queer Negotiations of the Postcolonial in R. Raj Rao's The Boyfriend
2012
"This paper focuses on the discussion of South Asian queer identity as it relates to the state of the postcolonial nation. It pays particular attention to the ways in which queerness engages with postcolonial fractures of the heteropatriarchal nation- class, caste, language and religion among other divisions. Focusing on R. Raj Rao’s novel The Boyfriend (2003), I work contrary to the logic of romantic idealization that would position the postcolonial nation against repressive homophobic statutes of colonialism. My reading suggests that the postcolonial nation is complicit with the former colonial project in marginalizing and policing queerness. "
Commonwealth Essays and Studies
The decolonial concept of "coloniality of power" expounded by Aníbal Quijano and Walter Mignolo appears particularly apposite in relation to postcolonial social formations whereby discursive legacies of colonisation, such as modernity, rationality and progress, continue their operations of "management and control" (Mignolo 2018, 143). 1 As Mignolo suggests, "surrounding the idea of modernity is a discourse that promises happiness and salvation through conversion, progress, civilization, modernization, development, and market democracy" (142). Coloniality of power connects colonial to postcolonial societies such that formal decolonisation or independence from European imperial powers does not necessarily translate into dismantling structures of power in postcolonial societies. The following essay therefore focuses on those continuities of power held over subaltern subjects, such as women, queers and ethnic/caste subalterns for whom the coloniality of power-a fully functioning legacy of colonisation-is the most manifest in South Asia. Holding on to the usefulness of notions such as "revolution as evolution" in terms of independence from European powers and the temporal marker "post" of the postcolonial, i.e., the revolution that would encompass an evolution in time, I scrutinise the inability of this evolution to transform colonial into postcolonial modernity. Through a reading of queer adolescent fiction from South Asia, this essay analyses the contours of the promise of decolonisation from imperial powers, which materialises as a series of muted revolutions or revolutions-in-waiting. 2 In terms of staging the vexed encounter between queer adolescence, adulthood and postcolonial modernity, Shyam Selvadurai's first novel Funny Boy (1994) and P. Parivaraj's sole novel Shiva and Arun (1998) provide a generative ground for critical
A Discordant Harmony – A Critical Evaluation of the Queer Theory from an Indian Perspective
Queerness or rather queer sexuality in India has always been the favourite child of debate and discussions. Queer identity in India has always suffered through the dilemma of to be or not to be. As Dasgupta puts it, " Identities are complicated to begin with and become more complicated when relating them to nation and sexuality ". Given the diversity of India in terms of not only culture but ethnicity as well, Indian sexual identities are the product of " Mulipicitous effects and perceptions of tradition, modernity, colonization and globalization " (Dasgupta, 2011) that are more often in conflict with each other than in a harmonious synthesis. The main argument of this paper is to trace a lineage of queerness in India both in terms of its representation in literature by analyzing The Editor (1893) and The Housewife (1891) by Rabindranath Tagore; Lihaaf (1941) by Ismat Chugtai; and R. Raja Rao's The Boyfriend (2003), and how it prevailed in reality or the societal perception of the same. Providing a literature review by building a bridge in between the ancient and the contemporary India, the paper attempts to trace the missing links of when and how queerness went behind the curtains only to reappear in front of a more complicated, confused and probably a more rigid audience.
The Indian Queer: For Lack of a Better Term
Mapping World Anglophone Studies, 2024
Literature has often served as a weapon of social and political activism. The absence of a vernacular literary tradition of the sexual minority in a multi-lingual country like India has compelled the Indian queer to predominantly use English as the language of literary creation as well as theorising. The process of canon formation has taken the shape of (1) the publication of English anthologies of literary pieces such as Same-Sex Love in India: Readings in Indian Literature and (2) literary writing in English following the Anglophone models, as in the case of R Raj Rao’s Lady Lolita’s Lover (inspired by Lolita and Lady Chatterley’s Lover). This move aims at the consolidation of a pan-Indian queer community united not only by a common cause but also a common tongue and the creation of global solidarity of people defying the rigid taxonomy of identification through sex, gender, and sexual orientation. However, the queer terminology borrowed from the West lacks contextual specificity in the Indian subcontinent and has not been translated due to the lack of equivalent vernacular terms. The Indian queer, for lack of a better term, is faced not only with the challenge of overthrowing a compulsory norm-assigning web cast upon its shoulder, which too was a colonial imposition but is compelled to use tools alien to them.
The Criterion: An International Journal in English, 2024
In Sangeetha Sreenivasan’s novel Acid (2018) the colonial specters are subtle, but loud. The research undertaken reveals how the narrative lays bare the failure of the post-colony as it proactively orchestrates the lives of the characters who find themselves to be at the mercy of biopolitical forces. As Sreenivasan weaves her tale around the lesbian affair between Kamala, a married woman and mother of two, and Shaly, a woman who belongs to no one, the postcolonial anxieties surrounding heterosexual constructs of femininity reveal themselves. Kamala is a deviation from the traditional trajectory of the Indian woman for she opts to live with a woman, is a neglectful mother, and struggles with substance abuse. Talking about the role of women in the postcolonial nation state, Suparna Bhaskaran (2001) notes that women are held responsible for “maintaining honour and purity, preventing shame” and for “reproducing national culture.” In failing to do either, Kamala and Shaly are perennially pushed to the fringes of the post-colony, depicted via their displacements and move away from the former’s ancestral home which itself is a concrete manifestation of the colonial hangover that pervades throughout the narrative. I argue that the lack of a stable home for Kamala and Shaly subtly reifies their position as outsiders who cannot be integrated within the postcolonial nation state. The study analyzes how the narrative exposes the rubric of gender power relations in the post-colony through the constant hierarchization of power as seen in the constant negotiation of invisibilized queer lives. Keywords: Post-colony, displacement, outsider, negotiation, invisibilized
Towards a Post-Queer Modernity: The Reclamation of Same-Sex Literary Cultures of/in India
Lapis Lazuli, Vol. 9, No.1, 2019
The idea that the discourses and the praxes of sexualities need to be critically interrogated, problematized, and rethought of has gained ground in the recent past, and the issue of ‘modernity’ has come to occupy one of the key positions that inform and complicate this project. However, the singular idea of ‘modernity’ is both inadequate and detrimental towards the plurality of modernities in the non-West, necessitating a rethinking through what Dilip Gaonkar and Charles Taylor theorize as ‘alternative modernities.’ In this context, research on the modernities of ‘queer’ sexualities can be re-oriented through a consideration of what has been theorized as the ‘post-queer’ by Peter Jackson, David Ruffolo, and Adam Green. This paper considers ‘alternative modernities’ and the ‘post-queer’ co-relationally and attempts at interrogating the idea of a multivalent post-queer modernity through a discussion of some key queer literary and critical texts published in the past two decades in India.
MAHESH DATTANI’S ON A MUGGY NIGHT IN MUMBAI: AN ODYSSEY OF INDIAN HOMOSEXUALS
Gay and Lesbian relationships are branched off as two separate identity of homosexual behaviour and the issues relating to it has been a matter of intense debate in India and abroad in late 20th century especially, when in a post-war era the issues of identity crisis were being voiced by people through the corridors of academic study on postcolonial perspectives that employs certain critical strategies to examine literature, culture, history etc. of the former colonial countries of the empire. When the empire writes back; it results in the attempt to resurrect culture through critical inquiry and it branches off to different critical strategies like hybridity, diaspora, feminism etc .The present paper focuses on Dattani’s handling on the homophobic condition of Indian homosexuals, their dehumanizing and split personality due to social norms and law of the land, their aspirations, the existential dilemma and the author’s plea for a tolerant view on them rather than banishment from the society. At the outset the gay and lesbian movement is discussed vis-à-vis the western paradigm. Key Words: Absurdity, Existential dilemma, Gay, Lesbian, Homophobia