Has there been a ‘conspiracy of silence’ regarding sexuality in India, be it within social movements or as a focus of scholarship? A Question of Silence? interrogates this assumption in order to thematise a crucial field. Prefaced by a detailed introductory overview, the essays use diverse perspectives to develop an understanding of the institutions, practices and forms of representation of sexual relations and their boundaries of legitimacy. From unravelling the Kamasutra (the text) to investigating KamaSutra (the condom) the volume includes essays on how sexuality has been framed by the law, within social movements, or has been the site for patrolled caste, ethnic or gender identities. Other essays analyse cinematic, televisual and literary representations of sexuality. Taken as a whole, this book makes room for more wide-ranging approaches for tackling the sexual economies of desire and violence among men and women in modern India.
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Has there been a conspiracy of silence regarding sexuality in India? This book examines this field, with essays that use diverse perspectives to develop an understanding of the institutions, practices and forms of representation of sexual relations and their boundaries of legitimacy.
Read more
  • 1. Introduction: A Question of Silence? - Mary E. John and Janaki Nair
  • 2. Unravelling the Kamasutra - Kumkum Roy
  • 3. Offences agaist Marriage - Samita Sen
  • 4. 'Left to the Imagination': Indian nationalisms and female sexuality - Tejaswini Niranjana
  • 5. Reproductive Bodies and Regulated Sexuality - Anandhi S.
  • 6. Comrades-in-Arms - U. Vindhya
  • 7. Sexuality and the Film Apparatus - Ravi Vasudevan
  • 8. Citizenship and its Discontents - Susie Tharu
  • 9. Inventing Saffron History - Uma Chakravarti
  • 10. Uneven Modernities and Ambivalent Sexualities - Kalpana Ram
  • 11. On Bodily Love and Hurt - V. Geetha
  • 12. Enforcing Cultural Codes - Prem Chowdhry
  • 13. Globalisation, Sexuality and the Visual Field - Mary E.John
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Has there been a conspiracy of silence regarding sexuality in India? This book examines this field, with essays that use diverse perspectives to develop an understanding of the institutions, practices and forms of representation of sexual relations and their boundaries of legitimacy.
Read more

Product details

ISBN
9781856498920
Published
2000-10-01
Publisher
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC; Zed Books Ltd
Age
UU, UP, P, 05, 06
Language
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Heftet
Number of pages
420

Biographical note

Mary John is Senior Fellow at the Centre for Women's Development Studies, New Delhi. Her book Discrepant Dislocations: Feminism, Theory and Postcolonial Histories (1996) has been co-published by the University of California Press and Oxford University Press, Delhi. Current research interests include the history of the Indian women's movement, and the formation of women's studies, international feminism and problems of globalisation. Janaki Nair is Fellow at the Madras Institute of Development Studies and is currently Visiting Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society, Bangalore. She has written on the social, cultural and political history of modern India. She has published widely in Indian and international journals. Her publications include Women and Law in Colonial India (Kali for Women, 1996) and Miners and Millhands: Work, Culture and Politics in Princely Mysore (Sage, 1998). She has also produced and directed 'After the Gold', a documentary film of the Kolar gold fields (Betcam Video, 1997).