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Genius and the Construction of the “Inferior Female Creator”: The Case of Eliza Haywood

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Claudia Chibici-Revneanu

Escuela Nacional de Estudios Superiores (ENES), Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), León, Mexico

Volume 7, Number 3, 2015 I Full Text PDF

Abstract

This article is based on the idea that the Romantic ideology of genius brought with it a gendered antagonist category: that of the commercially driven “inferior female creator.” This image, a kind of archetypal figure filled with the life-stories of individual women writers, conveniently collapsed the early Romantic, status-quo threatening forces of literary commercialism and feminization into one. The phenomenon is studied specifically with reference to the 18th century English author Eliza Haywood. By analyzing attacks on Haywood and other important female writers during her lifetime, as well as the predominantly negative image of the author created in George Frisbee Whicher’s early 20th century biography The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood, it will be shown that the writer seems to have acted as a key representative of a derogatory category which lofty, predominantly male “geniuses” could define themselves against.

Keywords: genius; gender; Eliza Haywood; inferior female creator; G.F. Whicher, The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood Keep Reading

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Representation and Categorization: Understanding the Hijra and Transgender Identities Through Personal Narratives

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Rajorshi Das
University of Delhi, New Delhi, India

Volume 7, Number 3, 2015 I Full Text PDF

Abstract:

Following the April 2014 Supreme Court judgment, several attempts have been made to define and specify what constitute the Indian transgender identity. My paper looks at Laxmi Narayan Tripathi’s autobiography Me Hijra Me Laxmi as an important intervention in this debate. Using literary and cinematic works by her contemporaries, I shall argue that while the categorisation of the ‘third gender’ may be necessary to facilitate governmental policies for the community, one has to look beyond law as a legitimizing tool as evident from the uniqueness of Laxmi’s ‘celebrification’ and its impact within Queer activism.

Keywords: Third Gender, Hijra, Laxmi, Transgender, Queer, Supreme Court, Celebrity, Testimony

Introduction:

In December 2013, the Supreme Court reversed the 2009 Delhi High Court judgment, reinstating the constitutional validity of Section 377 originally introduced in the Indian Penal Code by the British government in 1869 to criminalise all non-procreative sexual acts. The major grounds cited for the decision include the lack of prosecution under this law and the insignificance of a “minuscule fraction of the country’s population” (“Supreme Court Sets”, 2013) that gets affected by it. Consequently it came as a surprise when few months later the apex court in response to a writ petition filed by NALSA and supported by activists like Laxminarayan Tripathi (Dutta, 2014, p. 225) not only recognised the transgender community as the ‘third gender’ but also instructed the states to make reservation for them in employment and education sectors. While activists have questioned the inherent contradiction between these two judgements, I argue that it makes a significant (though unintelligent) distinction between gender performativity and sexual orientation. As Jasbir Puar (1998) writes –“one must interrogate not only how the nation disallows certain queers but perhaps more urgently, how nations produce and may in fact sanction certain queer subjectivities over others” (p. 414). Any definition of the Indian transgender is bound to be flawed and limiting unless understood from its cultural context. Aniruddha Dutta points out that the two judges in the latter case failed to come to any definite understanding of the transgender: while Justice Radhakrishnan relies on gender self-determination, Justice Sikri identities surgical evidence as primary criteria and restricts the label to the hijra community (p. 231). This recognition of the hijra as a gender endemic to India is at the cost of excluding those who identify themselves only by their sexual orientations- gays, bisexuals and lesbians.

As someone not belonging to the transgender community, I cannot claim to authenticate any of the experiences testified in Laxmi’s book. However, as a researcher, I can try and understand the various strands of the identity politics by looking at the representations of transgender bodies. My choice of texts like Laxminarayan Tripathi’s Me Hijra Me Laxmi (2015) and Rituparno Ghosh’s Bengali film Chitrangada: A Crowing Wish (2012) is guided their primary focus on the hijra and transgender subjectivities respectively and problematization of these identities due to the celebrity status of the artists/subjects. I will also consider A Revathi’s Our Lives, Our Worlds (2011)—a collection of testimonies based on the theme of izzat–since being written by a fellow hijra, it not only authenticates Laxmi’s narrative but also probes into the specificities while contesting any attempt to homogenize them under umbrella terms like ‘LGBT’. In this process I shall also explore the relationship between gender and genre as evident from Laxmi’s work that heralds a new form of life-writing…Full Text PDF

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What is Performance Studies?

Richard Schechner Tisch School of the Arts, New York University  Download PDF Version Because performance studies is so broad-ranging and

The Curious Case of Shanthi: The Issue of Transgender in Indian Sports

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Sudeshna Mukherjee, Bangalore University          

Background of the study

Shanthi Soundarajan an Indian runner was born in 1981 in the village of Kathakkurichi in Pudukkottai District of Tamil Nadu, India. Soundarajan, a dalit by birth belongs to poorest of poor category. She grew up in a small hut devoid of toilet, water or electricity. Her mother and father had to go to another town to work in a brickyard, where they earned the equivalent of $4 a week. While they were gone, Shanthi, the oldest, was in charge of taking care of her four siblings. Sometimes, Soundarajan’s grandfather, an accomplished runner, helped while her parents were away. When she was 13, he taught her to run on an open stretch of dirt outside the hut and bought her a pair of shoes. At her first competition, in eighth grade, Soundarajan won a tin cup; she collected 13 more at interschool competitions. The sports coach at a nearby high school took note of her performances and spotted her. The school paid her tuition and provided her with uniform and lunch. Athletics gave a new dimension to her life engulfed with struggles.

She had very impressive track record to her credit. At a national meet in Bangalore in July 2005 she won the 800m, 1,500m and 3000m.In 2005 she attended the Asian Athletics Championships in South Korea, where she won a silver medal. In 2006, she was chosen to represent India at the Asian Games held in Doha, Qatar. In the 800 meters, Soundarajan took the silver in 2 minutes, 3.16 seconds, beating Viktoriya Yalovtseva of Kazakhstan by 0.03. This win and a subsequent failed gender test lead to Soundarajan becoming embroiled in an ongoing, unresolved debate over the issue of transgender and sports (BBC News ,2006).She was told results indicated that she “does not possess the sexual characteristics of a woman” (BBC News, 2006). Soon after the results of the sex test came out, she was stripped of her silver medal.

In this backdrop, my descriptive, diagnostic study, based secondary data, would like to trace the plights of transgender sports personnel in India and abroad.

Conceptualizing Transgender:

A person’s sex is rooted in biology. Sex is “either of the two major forms of individuals that occur in many species…distinguished respectively as female or male especially on the basis of their reproductive organs and structures” (Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary). On the other hand, gender is a socio-cultural construction. It is the behavioral, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with one sex. Transgender is an umbrella term that describes “individuals whose gender identity doesn’t match the gender identity commonly experienced by those of the individuals’ natal sex” (Buzuvis, 2011).

Transgender is a general term applied to a variety of individual, behaviors and group involving tendencies that diverge from the normative gender role (woman or man) commonly, but not always, assigned at birth, as well as the role traditionally held by society.Transgender is the state of one’s “gender identity” (Self-identification as male, female, both or neither) not matching one’s assigned gender”(identification by others as male or female based on physical/genetic sex) Transgender does not imply any specific form of sexual orientation, they may identify as heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, pansexual or asexual. The precise definition for transgender remains in flux, but include, of relating to or designating a person whose identity does not conform unambiguously to conventional notions of male or female gender, but combines or moves between these.

A transgender individual may have characteristics that are normally associated with a particular gender, identify elsewhere on the traditional gender continuum, or exist outside of it as “other”, “a-gender”, “inter-gender” or third gender.

According to S.Kessler & W.Mekenna (1978) in theory, transgender is a challenge to the Social Construction of gender. In practice, it is usually transgender people in one way or another not place them outside the conventional male/female dichotomy, yet live in social world that recognizes only females and males. In the light of three possible meanings of trans, they considered to deconstruct gender.

The prefix “trans” has 3 different meanings. Trans means change, as in the word “transform”. In this first sense transgender people change their bodies to fit the gender they feel they always were. Transgender in this sense is synonymous with what is typically meant by the term (Kessler & Mekenna, 1978).

In the second sense “Trans” means across as in the word “transcontinental”. In this sense a transgendered person is one who moves across genders. This meaning does not imply being essentially or permanently committed to one or the other gender and therefore has a more social-constructionist connotation. The transgender person in this meaning does not leave the realm of two genders. The emphasis is on the “crossing” and not on any surgical transformation accompanying it such a person might say “I want people to attribute the gender “female” to me, but I’m not going to get my genitals changed. I don’t mind having my penis”. It is more like a previously unthinkable combination of male and female (Martin and Nguyen, 2004).

Third meaning of “trans” is beyond or through”. In this a trans gendered person is one who has gotten through gender, beyond gender. No clear gender attribution can be made, or is allowed to make. Gender ceases to exist, both for this person and those with whom they interact (Martin and Nguyen, 2004). This third meaning is the most radical, which talks for elimination of gender.

The term transgender was popularized in the 1970’s describing people who wanted to live cross-gender without sex reassignment surgery. In the 1980’s the term was expanded to an umbrella term and became popular as a means of uniting all those whose gender identity did not mesh with their gender assigned at birth. In the 1990’s the term took on a political dimension as an alliance covering all those who have at some print not conformed to gender norms, and the term became used to question the validity of those norms or pursue equal rights and antidiscrimination legislation, leading to its widespread usage in the media, academic world and law. The term continues to evolve; Transgender identity includes many overlapping categories including transsexual, cross-dressers, and transvestite and so on. Among these the term “transsexual” requires little elaboration, as it is closer to the term transgender.

Transsexual is a subcategory under the transgender umbrella. Three criteria are used to classify a transgender individual as transsexual: “(1) persistent discomfort about one’s Birth-Sex, (2) at least two years of persistent preoccupation with acquiring the sex characteristics of the other sex, and (3) having reached puberty (the age at which the reproductive organs mature)”( Pilgrim,2003 495- 501 ) .Transsexual people have deep conviction that the gender to which they were assigned at birth on the basis of their physical anatomy or birth gender is incorrect. That conviction often compels them to undergo hormonal or surgical treatment to bring their physical identity into line with their preferred acquired gender identity.

Transsexualism is not the same as cross-dressing for sexual thrill, psychological comfort or compulsion. It is not the same as being sexually attracted towards people of the same sex. Many transsexual people wish to keep their condition private, and this must be respected and they should be treated as members of their acquired gender…Access Full Text of the Article

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Is there a Place that is Non-Gendered in this World?: A Critique of Oyewumi’s Non Gendered Yorùbá Family

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Olúkáyò?dé R. ADÉS?UYÌ, Adekunle Ajasin University, Akungba-Akoko, Ondo State, Nigeria

Abstract

The paper is an appraisal of Oyeronke Oyewumi’s argument that Yorùbá is non-gendered. It examines her arguments in support of this. It finds out that Oyewumi’s claim is not evident in Yorùbá setting. At best, it can be considered to be pseudo argument. The paper concludes, using the methods of conceptual analysis and philosophical argumentation, that since the discourse about gender is a universal phenomenon, and since it cannot be done away given its inherent function, there exists no nation, race group of people without gender. Therefore, Yorùbá cannot be an exception, that is, by implication, Yorùbá is gendered.

[Keywords: gender, non-gendered, feminism, agbo-ilé, ?m?-ìyá]

Introduction

It is not uncommon to hear people talking about gender and sex. In which case, both concepts are parts of human languages. They are very common in the feminist context such that no feminist theory can be discussed without mentioning either of these concepts. However, these concepts have different meanings and interpretations, and their meanings and interpretations depend on the use. For instance, Idowu (2002: 39) has differentiated between sex and gender. For him, the difference is that while sex refers to the genetic and physical characteristics of persons that define their identities to be either male or female, gender refers “to the culturally accepted behaviours and ways of relating to others expected of the two sexes.” In this case, gender is socially constructed (Idowu, 2002: 39). It may imply that gender discussion is neither relative nor contextual.

Oyewumi (2002) has, however, argued that gender discourse is not universal but contextual. This further implies that feminist theory and, of course any discussion are not universal. To argue for this, Oyewumi (2002) uses Africa (Yorùbá) as point of reference to prove that Africans and Africa are non-gendered; rather what is evident is seniority orientation.

This paper examines Oyewumi’s claims and analysis used to deny Africans as non-gendered. Method similar to hers will be adopted, that is, conceptual clarification. This is informed given by her use of method of conceptual clarification. It shall conclude that her claims are not tenable.

An Overview of Oyewumi’s Notion of Gender

Oyewumi (2002) has taken a bold step to look into the issue of gender and conclude that Africans are non-gendered. To prove this, she looks at the issue from one of the African nations, Yorùbá. What she intends to do is to prove that if actually there is a nation or tribe in Africa that is non-gendered, then, it will be easy to establish the fact that Africans are non-gendered. In which case, the argument will be structured thus:

Yorùbá are non-gendered.

Yorùbá are Africans.

Therefore, Africans are non-gendered.

Apparently, the structure of the argument is valid; it is so in the sense that the information in the conclusion, which is Oyewumi’s thesis, is already contained in the premises. While the argument is deductive, it is, however, not sound. The argument, although deductive, is neither plausible nor tenable, bearing in mind that not all deductive arguments are sound; and for there to be a sound argument, the premises and the conclusion must be true and valid (Copi and Cohen, 2002: 42-43 ; Oke and Amodu, 2006: 81).

Before examining the main thesis, a look at her view about gender construct, origin and nature of feminism is necessary. According to Oyewumi (2002), there was a period named the age of modernity which was magnet-like age. It came with a lot of things like “the development of capitalism and industrialization, as well as the establishment of nation states and the growth of regional disparities to the world system” (Oyewumi, 2002). Furthermore, due to modernity, some other things not only surfaced but came to stay. These things, perhaps, still exist up till today; which are gender and racial categories (Oyewumi, 2002). The consequence of this modernity is the expansion of Europe and establishment of Euro/American cultural hegemony throughout the world.

This expansion would not have been felt if nothing had come with it. But it did not come alone; it came with what is today regarded as the best thing to have happened to the ‘uncivilized people’, which is education. This has led to the production of knowledge about human behaviour, history, societies and culture (Oyewumi, 2002). This means that the Europeans have since been in possession and production of knowledge (Salami, 2008: 195-213; Salami, 2009: 131-141). This has affected the history, religion, ethics, philosophy etc of other parts of the world, Africans inclusive, thereby leading to eurocentrism, the view that a particular group is intentionally and deliberately put at the centre and the group at the centre is propagated as being emulated (Summer, 1906; Berry and Kalin, 1995: 329; Toth and Vijder 2002: 252; Bailey and Harindranath, 2006: 304). The effect of this is both positive and negative, but since the focus of this paper is not on this, then, it needs not be discussed further.

Nevertheless, it must be said that the effect of eurocentrism is the racialization of knowledge, as noted by Oyewumi (2002). Of course, one needs not begin to question that due to the fact that most of this formal education training is in line with the European set up. That is the basis of her assertion that “Europe is represented as the source of knowledge and Europeans as knowers” (Oyewumi, 2002)….Access Full Text of the Article

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What is Performance Studies?

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“And What Are You Dreaming About?”: An Analysis of Tomson Highway’s Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing

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Lindsay Diehl, University of British Columbia, Okanagan Campus

Abstract

This paper argues that it is necessary to approach Tomson Highway’s play, Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing, from a culturally appropriate perspective that draws on Cree understandings of the Spirit World, for such a perspective can create enriched possibilities for understanding the play, as well as greater awareness of Indigenous struggles and experiences in Canada. More specifically, this paper draws on the traditional meaning of dreams in Cree epistemology,in order to demonstrate that the play’s framing as a dream can be seen as having a dual purpose: first, to envision and prepare for possible trials and difficulties, and second, to find creative and peaceful solutions to pervasive problems (Ferrara, 2004; Nabigon 2006). This paper considers, furthermore that since the dreamer in Dry Lips is a male character, theplay’s dream-framing addresses what Sam McKegney (2012) has identified as a common crisis of identity for Indigenous men, mainly their colonially-imposed alienation “from tribal-specific roles and responsibilities” (p. 241).Importantly, it is within this colonial context that the male characters in Dry Lips interact with, and express a lack of understanding and appreciation for, women. By paying attention to the colonial context and by using the Cree notion of ‘dream’ to analyze Indigenous masculinities, then, this paper provides an illustration of how the play gestures to Indigenous ‘ways of knowing’ as a means toward healing and decolonizing ends.

[Key words: Canada, Indigenous Criticism, Cree epistemology, colonialism, gender, masculinity]

 1. Introduction

Near the end of Tomson Highway’s controversial play Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing (1989), the lead character, Zachary Jeremiah Keechigeesik, awakens from a protracted nightmare. He has been sleeping, naked and snoring on the couch in his living room. He is startled when his wife, Hera Keechigeesik, enters the room with their newborn baby girl—he jumps up and falls off the couch, inciting Hera to ask him, “And what are you dreaming about?” (Highway, 1989, p. 128). Yet Zachary is too distraught to answer. Only when Hera sits down beside him and passes him the baby does he seem to calm down. He bounces the baby on his knee, and then holds her lovingly up in the air. As the stage instructions indicate, this is how the play concludes—with this image of “a beautiful naked Indian man lifting this naked baby Indian girl in the air, his wife sitting beside them, watching and laughing” (p. 130). This scene, which is remarkable for its sense of domestic happiness, peace, and balance, contrasts sharply with the alcohol abuse, violence, and dysfunction that characterize the majority of the play. Significantly, however, these darker aspects occur solely within Zachary’s dream—a framing that, this paper argues is crucial to carefully consider in ongoing critical discussions of the play. Indeed, this papers aims to show that this dream-framing intends to exaggerate, and thus meaningfully illuminate, the underlying and colonially-derived struggles, which shape the background of the fictional Wasaychigan Hill Indian Reserve.

2. Responding to Dry Lips’ Contentious Reception History

Although Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasinghas generated an archive of Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholarly engagements, the majority of these engagements characterize the play as forwarding problematic and colonially informed misconceptions of Indigenous peoples. The play premiered at Theatre PasseMuraille in Toronto on April 21, 1989 and soon garnered critical attention and awards. In particular, it won the Ontario Art Council’s Chalmers Award and was short-listed for the Governor General’s Award the year that it premiered. In 1991, however, subsequent performances of the play at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa drew a great deal of negative criticism, most notably from Indigenous women. Two of the most disapproving responses were those of Anishnaabe writer Marie Annharte Baker and Metis poet Anita Tuharsky, both of whom expressed concern that the play does not adequately assign responsibility to non-Indigenous people and institutions for the damages that they have caused to Indigenous communities. As Baker (1991) explains, “I worry about the unintended…A yuppie would go home [from the play] feeling relieved that Indians live on the rez [the Indian reservation] and in other parts of the city” (p. 89). Likewise, Tuharsky (1991) contends that Dry Lips perpetuates damaging perceptions of Indigenous peoples. She posits that the play even accedes “to create pleasures for the [wider Canadian] public which enjoys [negative] stereotypes and images,” especially of women (p. 5). Following these responses, non-Indigenous critics also added to the condemnation of the play. Alan Filewod (1992), for example, asserts that Dry Lips “lets the Anglo audience off the hook,” by not obliging non-Indigenous peoples to confront their own culpability in a history of colonial oppression (p. 21). The commonality between these criticisms is that they see the play as supporting, instead of questioning, colonial misunderstandings about Indigenous peoples. This paper refers to this reception history, because in turning to its own analysis—which utilizes the Cree notion of ‘dream’ to interpret Dry Lips—it aims to follow the lead of Anishinaabe scholar Armand Garnett Ruffo (2009), who contends that Indigenous concepts and ‘ways of knowing’ can provide an alternative method of interpreting this play,a method which may begin to productively address some of the complex and difficult issues raised by such criticisms…Access Full Text of the Article

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Naturalizing ‘Queerness’: A Study of Shyam Selvadurai’s Funny Boy

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Prateek, Ramjas College, New Delhi, India

If the representation of same-sex sexuality in punitive terms leaves gays in shock, then the legitimizing of Article XVI Section 377 (which bars gay sex) in India made gays all over the world, especially in South Asia speechless and traumatized. In response to this universally misconstrued image of an ‘unnatural’ man, Shyam Selvadurai, a Canadian-Sri Lankan writer creates a narrative which not only offers an ‘innocent peek’ into the biased perspectives of heterosexuals towards queers but the use of a child narrator is a deliberate ploy with which he deconstructs the craving for a so called ‘healthy’ text.’ Thus, this article, by musing on Selvadurai’s most acclaimed text Funny Boy (1994), attempts to examine how and why ‘unhealthy’ texts are constructed. Secondly, it elaborates on the subtle literary strategies used by Selvadurai to debunk pre-conceived notions of a heterosexual literary text. Finally, the article while locating a gay narrative in the social and cultural context of Sri Lanka, presents a gendered analysis of homosexuality in Sri Lanka.

Unhealthy Text

A healthy text is a heteronormative construct, which refers to a text where first, heterosexuality is naturalized and homosexuality is either sidelined or demonized; secondly, where the writer manages to exorcise the demons of unheard voices, and finally, the writer can prevent the eruption of contested spaces. Since Selvadurai challenges all the above mentioned conventions connected to a heterosexual text, his text can be considered as a snapshot of what one can call as ‘unhealthy text.’

Jonathan Ned Katz while chronicling the history of heterosexuality discussed the idea of “invention of heterosexuality.” Following the argument of Freud, Katz points out that “heterosexual” is not merely a noun but frequently an adjective, describing a “drive,” a “love,” an “instinct,” and a “desire,” as well as a sexual activity and a type of person (66). What Katz called “the invention of heterosexuality” referred to his idea that “heterosexuals were made, not born.” According to Katz, the idea of heterosexuality emerged at a specific point in history, and its history intertwines with the story of industrialization and urbanization, the rise of the middle classes, the complications of empire, and the scientific and philosophical legacies of the Enlightenment. The term heterosexuality was created to give medical and intellectual legitimacy to the desires of the emerging middle class…Access Full Text of the Article


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Revisiting Homophobia in Times of Solidarity, Identity and Visibility in Uganda

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Prince Karakire, GUMA, Researcher and Director, Social Economic Research and Development, Uganda

Abstract

There is an apparent deepening in anxieties of the increasing rapid social change in Uganda, with the escalation of homophobia, if not more so. Homosexuals in their quest for solidarity and visibility have increasingly become victims of homophobic violence. In this study, I draw upon critical studies in geography, urban sociology, feminism, anthropology, Queer theories, and identity politics, to poignantly axamine manifestations of homophobia in the context of changing social structures. For this purpose, I adopt a multi-sited ethnography and hybrid genre of discourse analysis.

Introduction

There is an apparent deepening of anxiety in relation to the subject of homosexuality in Uganda. Despite anthropological narratives of African culture’s zero tolerance to homophobia, (see, Mutua, 2011; Epprecht, 2004; Murray, 1998, etc), itsintensificationandsolidification has not only had dire consequences for the homosexual community, it is a matter of curiosity. This curious trend, it ought to be mentioned, has emerged at the same time that as gay visibility are increasingly beginning to emerge and obscure the traditional same-sex behaviours, where homosexuals are continuously stepping away from the typically African gender-stratified systems that have long characterized same-sex relations between men. Consequently, gay men in their quest to sexually construct themselves have increasingly become affected by society’s aggressive compulsion to denigrate gay visibility.

And yet, a bulk of the body of work on homosexuality and homophobia persistently revolves around traditional explanations for contemporary homophobia. A few other studies either tend to disclose homophobia toward the gay communities (see, for instance, Kaoma, 2009), or merely explicate the difficulties gay men face while attempting to live the lives they feel they ought to be living. For instance, some studies on homophobia in Uganda mostly adopt a reductionist perspective often reducing homophobia to nothing more than a product oftraditional attitudes and values (Chi-Chi and Kabwe, 2008; Epprecht, 2001), the American Christian Right (Kaoma 2009), and the colonial entrenchment of homophobic laws (Sanders, 2009; Epprecht, 2004). And yet such narratives are not only inappropriate as they serve to conflate the agency of the African leaders and ordinary people who engage in homophobia and homophobic practices, they also reinforce streotypical ideas, and fail to offer consistent answers for the apparent growth of political and public expedience and intensification of homophobic practices.

Besides, contemporary homophobia is simply too complex to be reduced to a few ‘historical’ underlying factors such as culture, religion, or a simple binary opposition between the religious right and advocates of feminism and/or secularism. Consequently, homophobic effects of homosexual visibility and solidarity ought to be explored. It is the aim of this study therefore to constitute the conflicts and dynamics between homophobia andwesternnotionsof (homo)sexuality within global contexts. In the sections that follow, I draw upon critical studies in geography, urban sociology, feminism, anthropology, queer theories, and identity politics, to poignantly axamine manifestations of homophobia in the context of changing social structures. The subsequent section explores literature to revisiting homophobia in modern times…Access Full Text of the Article


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“Against the Order of Nature”?: Postcolonial State, Section 377 and the Homosexual Subject

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Shramana Das Purkayastha, Vijaygarh Jyotish Ray College, Kolkata, India

Abstract

In the light of the theorisation on identity-formation, the present paper proposes to discuss how the post-colonial Indian nation-state, through its multiple apparatus, becomes complicit in the discursive genesis of heteronorm. Issues of national culture and authentic tradition create in India a special kind of problem that queer-activism needs to grapple with. The focus of my discussion would specifically be on the debates surrounding Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code. I would like to interrogate how legal discourses appropriate the language of power, stereotyping both non-normative identities as well as the normative definition of Indian alterity, and serve to push the sexual minority into a cultural absence within the state.

Queer studies, as the discipline has evolved over time, have repeatedly raised and debated the question as to what kind of sexual behaviour constitutes the very narrow definition of the heteronorm. The possibility/viability of developing a habit of creative scepticism, necessary for deconstructing existing paradigms and imagining alternative forms of identity based on counter-normative sexual practices, has occupied the centre stage in the recent development of queer critical literature. Anthropologist Gayle Rubin is one of the pioneers of such iconoclasm. Critiquing the forcible marginalisation of non-normative people during the 1980s, she, in her seminal 1984 essay “Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality”, emphasises the urgent need to see through the very political construction of sexuality. Rubin asserts: “It is up to all of us to try to prevent more barbarism and to encourage erotic creativity… It is time to recognise the political dimensions of erotic life”. (35, emphasis mine) Related to this is Judith Butler’s concept of gender performance, as elaborated in her influential work Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. At its simplest, Butler’s notion emphasises the centrality of “performance” in maintaining one’s assigned gender role. The stability of the mutually exclusive categories of male and female is insured through repeated iteration of normative performative codes. As Butler comments, “…heterosexuality is compelled to repeat itself in order to establish the illusion of its own uniformity and identity…” (Qtd. Hall, 108)

In the light of this theorisation on the very political and contingent nature of identity-formation, the present paper proposes to discuss how heteronorm is discursively and performatively generated in the Indian post-colonial nation-state. I would like to interrogate the politics of systematic ostracism that is carried out against the Indian queer subject through the post-colonial nation-sate’s various machineries of power. The focus of my discussion would specifically be on Section 377 of Indian Penal Code. The issue gains in topical significance, given the current atmosphere of hostility that reeks of homophobia and belies India’s claim to modernity.

It is pertinent to note at this juncture that the politics of gender stereotyping and of the marginalisation of the sexual deviant in India is marked by particular cultural-national specificities. A blind application of western paradigms to understand the identity politics in India would be misleading. The dominant ideology in India does not always function around a simplistic binary between the heterosexual and homosexual. (Kapur, 237) Therefore the resistance faced by non-normative sexual entities too cannot be explained in terms of homophobia alone. Indian society betrays a discomfort regarding all issues of explicit sexual expression, be it same-sex love or the public display of affection. “Heteronorm” in India does not necessarily refer to male-female mutual attraction. Rather, marital, procreative and domestic sexual activity alone is legitimised. Counter-normative sexual behaviour in India therefore includes homoeroticism as well as all those different kinds of heterosexual love that transgresses the aforementioned categories (Bose, xviii). Any discussion of queer politics in the Indian nation-state, hence, must always take into account this complex network of power that permeates virtually all layers of Indian sexuality…Access Full Text of the Article


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Indian Feminist Publishing and the Sexual Subaltern

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Elen Turner, Independent Researcher, Australia

Abstract

The discussion of queer politics, identities and “sexual subalterns” in India has, after 2009, entered a new phase. Discourse on sexuality was once largely focused on law and health policies; now, such discourse is better able to address positive identities and their multitude of articulations. The relationship between queer and feminist discourse has become more productive. This article examines independent feminist publishers as a representative of Indian feminist discourse on sexuality and sexual subalternity. Such publishers are significant mediators of feminist scholarship and discourse, so analysing their work can reveal much about ‘mainstream’ forms of feminism. The December 2013 Supreme Court judgment to uphold Section 377 is concerning to many, but in the four and a half years that homosexuality was effectively legal in India, the visibility of the sexual subaltern broadened to the extent that it may be difficult to return to a pre-2009 state.

Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code that criminalised “carnal intercourse against the order of nature”, usually interpreted as sodomy, was read down by the Delhi High Court in 2009. The Indian Supreme Court, in December 2013, overturned this judgment, effectually re-criminalising homosexuality. Section 377’s reading down was widely celebrated within the queer community as an important milestone, and the Supreme Court judgment lamented. But the four years in which homosexuality was in effect de-criminalised saw large shifts in public awareness and acceptance of homosexuality, shifts that the judgment of the Supreme Court will likely have little effect upon.

This article suggests that the discussion of queer politics, identities and “sexual subalterns” has, after 2009, entered a new phase, one that is not primarily focused on law and health policies, but is able to look towards positive identities and their articulation in a variety of forms. Furthermore, the relationship between queer and feminist discourse has become more productive. I specifically examine independent feminist publishing outlets as a representative of Indian feminist discourse on sexuality and sexual subalternity. By ‘independent’, I mean groups that may or may not operate with not-for-profit status, but that are not owned by large publishing corporations, or are subject to the editorial intervention of individuals detached from the main operations of the group. Such publishers are by no means the sole producers of feminist scholarship and discourse, but they are significant mediators of them, so analysing their work can reveal a lot about ‘mainstream’, urban forms of Indian feminism. While in the last decade or so, an increasing amount of online activism and publication has been occurring in India as elsewhere, such work falls outside the scope of this paper as that emerging media warrants a case study in its own right. Book publishing was a form of Indian feminist activism and knowledge production that began in the 1980s, and although it has always claimed to at the forefront of progressive feminist knowledge production, the contradiction between this self-belief and its interactions with the “sexual subaltern” makes it a genre worthy of especial attention…Access Full Text of the Article


 

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The Upside-Down Swan: Suniti Namjoshi

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Akshaya K. Rath, National Institute of Technology, Rourkela, India

Abstract

Diasporic, lesbian and transnational, Suniti Namjoshi—within the framework of postcolonial discourse—attempts to construct an ‘alternative universe’ in textuality. In constructing of an alternative political identity, Namjoshi undertakes a comparative approach in selecting subjects for producing a neo-textual universe, and a comparative study of cross-cultural identities remain central to the analysis of Namjoshi’s work. In this paper I argue that it is because of colonial anti-sodomy law, and because of religious and social stigma that the mission of constructing an alternative universe remains operative in Namjoshi’s work. I also suggest that in Namjoshi’s work, feminism, postcolonialism and queer theory merge but her work has been deliberately sidelined by the academia.

In 2006 Suniti Namjoshi (b. 1941) published Sycorax: New Fables and Poems. It included a section on the ‘unsung / untold’ story of Shakespeare’s Sycorax and a section on the ‘new’ life of Protea. By then, taking textual genesis from Shakespeare’s The Tempest and imitating the fashion of many postcolonial texts, in 1984 Namjoshi had published in From the Bedside Book of Nightmare a section entitled “Snapshots of Caliban”. “Sycorax”, a continuation of “Snapshots of Caliban”, of rewriting Shakespeare, attempted to reorganise the structure of the “humanist universe”—a project, rather a challenge, she attempted to undertake in The Jackass and the Lady in 1980. Rewriting Shakespeare to challenge the existing structure of the male-centred ‘humanist universe’ is part of the volumes of writing she has produced. They include rewriting of ancient and canonical fables and stories, and making new ones in the process of defining / identifying the lesbian / feminist ‘self’ amongst birds, beasts and animals. Rewriting canonical texts as a third-world lesbian feminist also includes exploring possibilities of multiple dimensions of traditional stories, fables and poems. For instance, the untold story of Sycorax portrayed in Sycorax, inclusion of an ageing sparrow as the witness of colonialism, and humanising Protea, a character from Greek mythology as a lady, are some of the instances of reorganising the world. Presently celebrated as a fabulist and a poet, Namjoshi has been constantly producing poetry and fables since the publication of her first collection of poems, Poems, in 1967.

Namjoshi’s Because of India: Selected Poems and Fables (1989) and Goja: An Autobiographical Myth (2000) are considered autobiographical and they show her development as a third world lesbian poet. Conversations of Cow (1985) and The Mothers of Maya Diip (1991) thematically remain critical of lesbian identity in a heterosexist world. The collections of work celebrating lesbianism are mostly written outside India and Namjoshi justifies the reasons behind such an exercise in the introductory sections of Because of India.

This article explores that Namjoshi maps the different facets of lesbian desire and identity within the framework of postcolonial discourse. It analyzes the representation of animal imagery with which she identifies the homosexual self. Further, it highlights in principle the way law, religion and social discourses are presented against sexual identities in Namjoshi’s work, and the way she attempts to frame an alternative universe in textuality. It argues it is because of Indian law against homosexuality and social stigma that the mission of constructing an alternative universe remains operative in Namjoshi. Further, it suggests that in Namjoshi’s work, feminism, postcolonialism and queer theory merge but her work has been deliberately sidelined by the academia…Access Full Text of the Article


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What is Performance Studies?

Richard Schechner Tisch School of the Arts, New York University  Download PDF Version Because performance studies is so broad-ranging and

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