1st Edition

Queer Politics in Times of New Authoritarianisms Popular Culture in South Asia

Edited By Somak Biswas, Rohit K. Dasgupta, Churnjeet Mahn Copyright 2024
118 Pages
by Routledge

118 Pages
by Routledge

118 Pages
by Routledge

Queerness remains a central fault line in contemporary South Asia. Colonial-era ‘anti-sodomy’ laws, codified in Article 377 of the penal codes in India, Bangladesh and Pakistan, or Article 365 in Sri Lanka, exemplify the shared imperial lineages of the region as also their long postcolonial afterlives. Across South Asia and the world, new authoritarianisms have reignited old fault lines around... Read more

Introduction: Queer politics in times of new authoritarianisms

Somak Biswas, Rohit K. Dasgupta and Churnjeet Mahn

 

1. “Attempting to commit offences”: Protectionism, surveillance and moral policing of queer women in Sri Lanka

Sarala Emmanuel and Ponni Arasu

 

2. “It’s illegal but it’s not, like, really illegal”: Sri Lanka’s ‘sodomy laws’, the politics of equivocation, and queer men’s sexual citizenship in The One Who Loves You So

Shermal Wijewardene

 

3. Contesting the mainstream transwoman figurations: The question of caste and precarity in Udalaazham

Sruthi B Guptha and Sandhya V

 

4. Between the sheets: The queer sociality of Bombay zines

Brian A. Horton

 

5. Between ‘Cheeni’ and ‘Nupi Maanbi’: Transgender politics in Manipur at the intersection of nation and Indigeneity

Maisnam Arnapal and Debanuj DasGupta

 

6. Mirrors and murals: Reflections on embodied and state violence

Krystal Nandini Ghisyawan

 

7. Instagram representation of trans and hijra identities in Bangladesh

Tanvir Alim

Biography

Somak Biswas is a Postdoctoral Fellow, Faculty of History, University of Cambridge. His most recent book is Passages through India: Indian Gurus, Western Disciples and the Politics of Indophilia, 1890-1940 (2023).

Rohit K. Dasgupta is Senior lecturer in cultural industries at the University of Glasgow, UK. He is the author of Digital Queer Cultures in India (2017).

Churnjeet Mahn is Researcher in Literature with expertise in travel writing, race, and sexuality. Her most recent book is Queer Sharing in the Marketized University (2023).