'Gay Culture Rampant in Hyderabad': Analysing the Political and Libidinal Economy of Homophobia (original) (raw)
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This dissertation is a feminist critical discourse analysis of Indian English newspapers following the verdict of Navtej Singh Johar and others vs Union of India, which decriminalised private, consensual and adult homosexual sex from the ambit of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code. It examines articles from The Times of India and The Hindu over a six-month period to show how Indian news organisations are discursively producing a Hindu nationalist, homocapitalist queerness in the post Johar media landscape. It draws on media theories of political economy, agenda setting and framing, and queer critiques of Indian media to analyse the contours of this production, and to examine its ramifications for an India that is moving into the second term of a neoliberal, Hindu nationalist government. In doing so, this works attempts to challenge the subsumption of meanings of Indian queerness into hegemonic power structures.
The LGBT (Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Transgender) activism has raised the issue of sexuality and, in particular, alternative sexuality, and argues for its 'normalcy'. The state, on the other hand, has taken exception to such democratisation of 'desire' and has tried to 'discipline' it. The LGBT activism challenges the hegemony of the 'heterosexual' state. This paper explores the issue of sexuality and its alternate forms in India with special reference to the form, content, and spaces of lesbian and gay activism vis-à-vis Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC); strategies of assertion; and its problematic relation with the women's movements.
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This chapter analyses whether queer desire has been liberated from the postcolonial closet and, if so, how the processes of the market and law have combined to bring about the emergence and legibility of queer desire and the understandings of justice that inform such processes. I question whether these processes have produced an unequivocal victory in terms of bringing justice to highly stigmatized identities and the practices associated with them. I unpack how the effects of either a victory in the courtroom or greater visibility in and through the market result in instantiating queer desire into a linear, regulatory frameworkdesigned to cabin and confine, rather than to liberate or emancipate. Justice is equivalent to nothing more than restraining homosexuals to the borders of heteronormativity. This restraint is partly produced in and through the discourse of tolerance in law combined with the makeover of homosexuality produced in and through the consumptive market.
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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
The Variation in the Depiction of Queer Sexuality in India and the Question of Social Change
International journal of innovative research and development, 2016
The sexual minorities dwelling in India are fettered by the discrimination, stigmatization and continuous subjugation of the hetronormative social structure. The role of section 377 of the IPC also acted a very important role in shaping the homophobic environment in the present Indian society. The politics of creative resistance that is developed by the Indian cinema not only brings to light the plight of queer lives and experiences, but it also constructs an alternative culture against the dominant hetronormative culture that redefines the present Indian society. Indian Queer movement, like many other new social movements, is based upon the idea of bringing a social change; a change in our understanding of sexuality not from the conventional stage but from a peripheral one. It strives to demolish the manicured walls of predominant paradigms that define the sexual universe of any common man. The main argument is that with the increasing popularity of queer themes in Indian cinema a ...