(Hi)Stories of Desire
Sexualities and Culture in Modern India

Draws upon multi-disciplinary frameworks of analysis to provide an account of the making of sexual cultures in modern India.

Rajeev Kumaramkandath (Edited by), Sanjay Srivastava (Edited by)

9781108494410, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 20 February 2020

255 pages
23.5 x 15.5 x 2.2 cm, 0.45 kg

(Hi)Stories of Desire situates questions of sexuality in the larger domain where they are conditioned by and, in turn, also condition historically and culturally produced landscapes of being, doing and desiring. The book draws upon multi-disciplinary frameworks of analysis - including history, anthropology, literary studies, queer studies and psychoanalysis - to provide a pan-Indian account of the making of sexual cultures. Based on original research, the chapters foreground sexuality as a significant site for the making of regional, national and personal modernities. The volume addresses the modern paradox where sexuality is assigned a central significance in human life and yet its study tends to remain unconnected from the political, religious, social and economic contexts that produce human subjectivity. It will be of interest to a wide range of readership, opening up the topic to complex yet accessible ways of understanding the culture of sexualities and the sexuality of culture.

List of illustrations
Acknowledgements
Introduction: sexuality and sexualities Sanjay Srivastav and Rajeev Kumaramkandath
1. Politics of prop roots: beyond 'the repressive hypothesis' Anup Dhar
2. Of identities and other desires: thinking about sexualities Anirban Das
3. The stuttered process of subject formation: a sex worker's experiments with narration Navaneetha Mokkil
4. Sexual realism? (hetero) sexual excess and the birth of obscenity in Malayalam literature Rajeev Kumaramkandath
5. Sexualizing K?l? P?ni Akshaya K. Rath
6. Memories of a queer sexuality: revisiting two 'Toto' folk tales Kaustav Chakraborty
7. Learning about sex in Mumbai: rethinking the 'knowledge gap' debate in sexuality education Ketaki Chowkhani
8. Family planning and the masculinity of Nirodh condoms in India Sayantani Sur
9. Women and their bodies: menstruation and the construction of sexuality Arunima Deka
10. Tanjai Prakash: between desire and labour Kiran Keshavmurthy
11. Hijra intimacies and inheritances Brinda Bose
Contributors
Index.

Subject Areas: Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography [JHMC], Anthropology [JHM], Gender studies: women [JFSJ1], Cultural studies [JFC], Social & cultural history [HBTB]