Description
Palgrave Same-Sex Desire in Indian Culture Representations in Literature and Film 1970-2015 by Oliver Ross
This book explores representations of same-sex desire in Indian literature and film from the 1970s to the present. Through a detailed analysis of poetry and prose by authors like Vikram Seth, Kamala Das, and Neel Mukherjee, and films from Bollywood and beyond, including Onir's My Brother Nikhil and Deepa Mehta's Fire, Oliver Ross argues that an initially Euro-American "homosexuality" with its connotations of an essential psychosexual orientation, is reinvented as it overlaps with different elements of Indian culture. Dismantling the popular belief that vocal gay and lesbian politics exist in contradistinction to a sexually "conservative" India, this book locates numerous alternative practices and identities of same-sex desire in Indian history and modernity. Indeed, many of these survived British colonialism, with its importation of ideas of sexual pathology and perversity, in changed or codified forms, and they are often inflected by gay and lesbian identities in the present. In this account, Oliver Ross challenges the preconception that, in the contemporary world, a grand narrative of sexuality circulates globally and erases all pre-existing narratives and embodiments of sexual desire._x000D_ Table of contents :- _x000D_
Introduction _x000D_
1. Contradictions or Syncretism? The Politics of Female-Female Desire in Deepa Mehta's Fire and Ligy J. Pullappally's Sancharram (The Journey)_x000D_
2. "Am I Lesbian?" The Contexts of Female-Female Desire in the Work of Kamala Das_x000D_
3. "The Bliss I Could Portray": Elliptical and Declamatory Male-Male Desire in the Work of Vikram Seth_x000D_
4. Communal Tensions: Homosexuality in Raj Rao's The Boyfriend and Neel Mukherjee's A Life Apart_x000D_
5. Transitional Mediations: Homosexuality in My Brother Nikhil, 68 Pages, and Quest/Thaang_x000D_
Conclusion_x000D_