1 0
    £34.99 GBP
    £34.99 GBP
    Sale Sold out
    Free UK Shipping

    Freshly Printed - allow 7 days lead

    Unveiling Desire
    Fallen Women in Literature, Culture, and Films of the East

    Devaleena Das (Edited by), Colette Morrow (Edited by), Nawal El-Saadawi (Foreword by), Devaleena Das (Contributions by), Colette Morrow (Contributions by), Firdous Azim (Contributions by), Paramita Halder (Contributions by), Hafiza Nilofar Khan (Contributions by), Amrit Gangar (Contributions by), Naina Dey (Contributions by), Louis Betty (Contributions by), Lavinia Benedetti (Contributions by), Tomoko Kuribayashi (Contributions by), Meenakshi Malhotra (Contributions by), Chandrani Biswas (Contributions by), Radha Chakravarty (Contributions by), Feroza Jussawalla (Contributions by), Kuhu Sharma Chanana (Contributions by)

    9780813587844

    Paperback / softback, published 16 January 2018

    298 pages
    23.5 x 15.6 x 2 cm, 0.454 kg

    “Unveiling Desire’s greatest contribution is its exploration of the nexus of Eastern and Western feminisms. Readers will discover how the trope of the fallen woman appears in a fascinating array of texts, engaging themes of female agency, colonialism, nationalism, and patriarchal traditions.”
     
    - Amy Levin (editor of Global Mobilities: Refugees, Exiles, and Immigrants in Museums and Archives)
    “Unveiling Desire is an excellent book-length study of non-Western women’s sexuality and sexual desires that provides a much-needed corrective to Western feminist Orientalisms and their attendant chauvinisms. Breathtaking in its scope-from the nineteenth-century Bengali widow in South Asia to sex workers in Tokugawa-era Japan-this collection of essays is a must read for anyone interested in gender, sexuality, and feminism.”
    - Krupa Shandilya (author of Intimate Relations: Social Reform and the Late Nineteenth-Century South Asian Novel)
    "Enhanced for academia, Unveiling Desire: Fallen Women in Literature, Culture, and Films of the East is an especially and unreservedly recommended addition to college and university library Women's Studies, Asian Studies, Literary Studies, Film/Media Studies collections." 
    (Midwest Book Review) (Chronicle of Higher Education)
    "Offers a vibrant and valuable addition the field, with case studies and insights that are fresh and pertinent. The reader will become better acquainted with more than just the trope of the fallen women in non-Western culture; he or she will learn more about the lives, the experiences, the intellectual and affective history, as well as the rich complexity of Eastern women."
    (Women's Studies)
    "Without this important book, many of the texts that are analyzed would be lost in a canon that all too often privileges Eurocentric perspectives and concerns."
    (RGWS: A Feminist Review)

    In Unveiling Desire, Devaleena Das and Colette Morrow show that the duality of the fallen/saved woman is as prevalent in Eastern culture as it is in the West, specifically in literature and films. Using examples from the Middle to Far East, including Iran, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Thailand, Japan, and China, this anthology challenges the fascination with Eastern women as passive, abject, or sexually exotic, but also resists the temptation to then focus on the veil, geisha, sati, or Muslim women’s oppression without exploring Eastern women’s sexuality beyond these contexts. The chapters cover instead mind/body sexual politics, patriarchal cultural constructs, the anatomy of sex and power in relation to myth and culture, denigration of female anatomy, and gender performativity. From Persepolis to Bollywood, and from fairy tales to crime fiction, the contributors to Unveiling Desire show how the struggle for women’s liberation is truly global.  

    CONTENTS

    Foreword
    Nawal El-Saadawi
     
    Introduction
    Devaleena Das and Colette Morrow
     
    Part One: Chastity, Fidelity and Women’
    s Cross-Cultural Encounters
    1. Feminist Neo-Imperialism in Marjane Satrapi’
    s Persepolis
                  Colette Morrow
     
    2. The Forgotten Women of 1971: Bangladesh’
    s Failure to Remember Rape Victims of the Liberation War
               Firdous Azim
     
    3. Fragmented State, Fragmented Women: Reading Gender, Reading History in Partition Fiction
                 Paramita Halder
     
    4. The Trope of the “
    Fallen Women”
    in the Fiction of Bangladeshi Women Writers
                 Hafiza Nilofar Khan
     
    Part Two: Forbidden Desires and Misogynist Enculturation   
    5. Polyamorous Draupadi: Adharma or Emancipation?
              Devaleena Das
     
    6. Damaged Goods! Managed Gods!  Indian Cinema’
    s Virtuous Hierarchies
                Amrit Gangar
     
    7. Roop Taraashi: Sex, Culture, Violence, Impersonation and the Politics of the Inner Sanctum
                 Naina Dey
     
    Part Three: Political Economy and Questioning Tradition in the Far East
    8. More Than an Exchange of Fluids: Thai Prostitutes and the Western Sexual Economy
               Louis Betty
     
    9. Representing Bad Women in Wu Zetian Si Da Qi’
    An: Political Criticism in Late Qing Crime Fiction
               Lavinia Benedetti
     
    10. The Problematic Maternal in Moto Hagio’
    s Graphic Fiction: An Analysis of “
    Iguana Daughter”

              Tomoko Kuribayashi
     
    Part Four: Unchaste Goddesses and Transgressive Women in a Turbulent Nation
    11. A Dark Goddess for a Fallen World: Mapping Apocalypse in some of Bankim Chandra Chatterjee's Novels
                Meenakshi Malhotra
     
    12. Desire and Dharma: A Study of the Representation of Fallen Women in the Novels of Bankim Chandra
               Chandrani Biswas
     
    13. The Fallen Woman in Bengali Literature: Binodini Dasi and Tagore’
    s Chokher Bali
             Radha Chakravarty
     
    Part Five: The Moral Frontiers of Lesbianism in the East     
    14. Shaking the Throne of God: Muslim Women Writers Who Dared
            Feroza Jussawalla
     
    15. Homoeroticism and Re-accessing the Idea of ‘
    Fallen Woman’
    in Keval Sood’
    s Murgikhana
           Kuhu Sharma Chanana
     
    Afterword
    Contributors
    Index
     

    View full details