β Scribed by Gayatri Gopinath
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
By bringing queer theory to bear on ideas of diaspora, Gayatri Gopinath produces both a more compelling queer theory and a more nuanced understanding of diaspora. Focusing on queer female diasporic subjectivity, Gopinath develops a theory of diaspora apart from the logic of blood, authenticity, and patrilineal descent that she argues invariably forms the core of conventional formulations. She examines South Asian diasporic literature, film, and music in order to suggest alternative ways of conceptualizing community and collectivity across disparate geographic locations. Her agile readings challenge nationalist ideologies by bringing to light that which has been rendered illegible or impossible within diaspora: the impure, inauthentic, and nonreproductive.
Gopinath juxtaposes diverse texts to indicate the range of oppositional practices, subjectivities, and visions of collectivity that fall outside not only mainstream narratives of diaspora, colonialism, and nationalism but also most projects of liberal feminism and gay and lesbian politics and theory. She considers British Asian music of the 1990s alongside alternative media and cultural practices. Among the fictional works she discusses are V. S. Naipaulβs classic novel A House for Mr. Biswas, Ismat Chughtaiβs short story βThe Quilt,β Monica Aliβs Brick Lane, Shyam Selvaduraiβs Funny Boy, and Shani Mootooβs Cereus Blooms at Night. Analyzing films including Deepa Mehtaβs controversial Fire and Mira Nairβs Monsoon Wedding, she pays particular attention to how South Asian diasporic feminist filmmakers have reworked Bollywoodβs strategies of queer representation and to what is lost or gained in this process of translation. Gopinathβs readings are dazzling, and her theoretical framework transformative and far-reaching.
Acknowledgments ix
Impossible Desires: An Introduction 1
Communities of Sound: Queering South Asian Popular Music in the Diaspora 29
Surviving Naipaul: Housing Masculinity in A House for Mr. Biswas, Surviving Sabu, and East Is East 63
Bollywood/Hollywood: Queer Cinematic Representation and the Perils of Translation 93
Local Sites/Global Contexts: The Transnational Trajectories of Fire and "The Quilt" 131
Nostalgia, Desire, and Diaspora: Funny Boy and Cereus Blooms at Night 161
Epilogue: Queer Homes in Diaspora 187
Notes 195
Bibliography 221
Filmography 235
Index 237
π SIMILAR VOLUMES
<div>Argues for the uses of queer, feminist transnational theory in order to understanding South Asian and South Asian diasporic identities and cultural production.</div>
This book develops a queer methodology to analyse a queer archive for the impact of normativity on subjecthood and the ways in which it shapes and curtails gender and sexuality. Chapters demonstrate how normativity functions to mask its own operation, is internalised by subjects, and is continually
Issues of cultural hybridity, diaspora and identity are central to debates on ethnicity and race and, over the past decade, have framed many theoretical debates in sociology, cultural studies and literary studies. However, these ideas are all too often considered at a purely theoretical level. In th