Queering Normativity and South Asian Public Culture

ISBN-13: 9783031395086 / Angielski / Twarda / 2023

J. Daniel Luther

Opis

This book develops a queer methodology to analyse a queer archive for the impact of normativity on subjecthood and the ways in which it shapes and curtails gender and sexuality. Chapters demonstrate how normativity functions to mask its own operation, is internalised by subjects, and is continually reproduced through discourse and in material ways. In seeking to make visible the functioning of normativity, the book performs a task of queering normativity by querying that which appears as natural in South Asian public culture. The book engages with both the consolidation and the unsettling of normativity through artefacts of South Asian public culture including canonical figures such as Rabindranath Tagore, literary and cinematic texts, Bollywood films, advertisements, social media posts, and ubiquitous ephemera in South Asia and beyond. Through these texts, the author unpacks the construct of canon, the nation, woman as a post-colonial subject, the home and the child, marriage, same-sex sexuality and identity.

This book will be of interest to scholars and students studying and researching Queer Studies, Gender and Sexuality Studies, South Asian Studies, Cultural Studies, Literary Studies, Film Studies, and Media Studies.

Spis treści

1 ‘The Normal’ Is Everywhere.

2 How to Read Tagore ‘Wrong’: The Secret Life of Normativity.

3 Between the Two Mother Indias: Normativity and the Home.

4 ‘Caste No Bar’: Normativity and Gay Marriage.

5 Between Signs: Bollywood, Normativity, and Same-Sex Sexualities.

6 Conclusions: Towards Queering Normativity.

O autorze

J. Daniel Luther is Associate Programme Director, at the Rhodes Trust, University of Oxford, UK. They are also the co-founder of the international platform and network called ‘Queer’ Asia. They have previously taught at the Department of Gender Studies at LSE, UK as a LSE Fellow in Gender, Film and Media, and at the University of Warwick, and SOAS, University of London. Their doctoral research examines the production and reiteration of gender and sexual norms in South Asian public culture. They are the co-editor of ‘Queer’ Asia: Decolonising and Reimagining Gender and Sexuality (2019).

Blurb

“In offering nothing less than a genealogy of the normal in the political modernity of South Asia and especially India, Luther sheds much light on the counternormative and antinormative, which are a constant and perhaps even hopeful presence in this stimulating book.”

—Rahul Rao, University of St Andrews, UK

“I urge scholars of sexuality to read the aptly titled, Wrong Readings Only, so that their own readings slant along the ‘right’ orientations.”

—Geeta Patel, University of Virginia, USA

“To queer normativity, Luther deftly argues, is to uncover the contradictory cultural logic of the ordinary, the commonsensical, and to read queer life anew.  A deeply personal and political book, Wrong Readings is a must-read for scholars of South Asian public culture and politics.”

—Anjali Arondekar, University of California, Santa Cruz, USA

This book traces counter and anti-normative acts within a queer archive of South Asian public culture. It critically analyses the ways in which norms, normativity, and ‘the normal’ are discursively and materially produced to shape gendered and sexual subjectivities. In seeking to make visible the functioning of normativity, this book queers normativity by querying that which appears as natural. Chapters engage with both the consolidation and the unsettling of normativity in South Asian canonical texts and figures such as Rabindranath Tagore, Hindi film Mother India, other popular literary and cinematic texts, advertisements, social media posts, and ubiquitous ephemera. Through these texts, the author unpacks the construct of canon, the nation, woman as a post-colonial subject, the home and the child, caste and marriage, same-sex sexuality and identity.

This book will be of interest to scholars and students studying and researching in Queer Studies, Gender and Sexuality Studies, South Asian Studies, Cultural Studies, Literary Studies, Film Studies, and Media Studies.

​J. Daniel Luther is the co-founder of the international platform and network called ‘Queer’ Asia. They have previously taught at the LSE, the University of Warwick, and SOAS. They are the co-editor of ‘Queer’ Asia: Decolonising and Reimagining Gender and Sexuality (2019).