Startseite Allgemein A Queer Lack of Success. Discourses on Same-sex Love and Neoliberalism in the Hindi Novel Paṃkhvālī Nāv by Paṃkaj Biṣṭ
Artikel
Lizenziert
Nicht lizenziert Erfordert eine Authentifizierung

A Queer Lack of Success. Discourses on Same-sex Love and Neoliberalism in the Hindi Novel Paṃkhvālī Nāv by Paṃkaj Biṣṭ

  • Alessandra Consolaro EMAIL logo
Veröffentlicht/Copyright: 14. März 2020
Veröffentlichen auch Sie bei De Gruyter Brill

Abstract

Paṃkhvālī nāv (The winged boat) is a Hindi novel by Paṃkaj Biṣṭ that appeared in installments in Haṃs (2007) and was published as a book in 2009. The protagonist is a homosexual man, and the novel, defined by the author as a “sensitive human tragedy” (Tehelka, 05/12/2012), constructs a highly heterocentered discourse on queerness. Set in India just before the neoliberal turn, the story discusses sexual citizenship not only with reference to Indian society, but also in a global context.

In this article I analyze the text, problematizing the notion of gender and the emergence of a queer identity corresponding with the opening up of Indian economy to neoliberal capital. Politics of sexual identity in newly globalizing economies are linked to global discourses on HIV/AIDS prevention, sexual health, sexual rights, and reproductive health. Also the emergence of queer literature in India, and of kh literature in the Hindi literary field, has to be investigated on the backdrop of global queer identity. Drawing on the ‘anti-social turn’ in Queer Studies, I propose an interpretation of queerness and failure as resistance to capitalism.

Bibliography

Ablett, Jonathan et al. (2007): The ‘Bird of Gold’: The Rise of India’s Consumer Market. http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/asia-pacific/the_bird_of_gold (09/16/2019).Suche in Google Scholar

Adduci, Matilde (2009): L’India Contemporanea. Roma: Carocci.Suche in Google Scholar

Ahmed, Sara (2010): “Feminist Killjoys (And Other Willful Subjects)”. Polyphonic Feminisms: Acting in Concert, the Scholar and Feminist Online 8.3. http://sfonline.barnard.edu/polyphonic/print_ahmed.htm (09/16/2019).Suche in Google Scholar

Bersani, Leo (2010): “Is the Rectum a Grave?”. In: Is the Rectum a Grave?: And Other Essays. Edited by Leo Bersani. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 3–30.10.7208/chicago/9780226043449.001.0001Suche in Google Scholar

Bhaskaran, Suparna (2004): Made in India: Decolonizations, Queer Sexualities, trans/national Projects. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.10.1057/9781403979254Suche in Google Scholar

Biṣṭ, Paṃkaj (2009): Paṃkhvālī Nāv. Nayī Dillī: Rājkamal Prakāśan.Suche in Google Scholar

Butler, Judith (1990): Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge.Suche in Google Scholar

Byres, T. J. (1997): The State, Development, Planning and Liberalisation in India. Oxford: OUP.Suche in Google Scholar

Cayla, Julien (2002): “A Passage to India. An Ethnographic Study of the Advertising Agency’s Role of Multinational Corporations in Mediating the Cultural Learning and Adaptation of Multinational Corporations”, PhD Thesis University of Colorado, Department of Marketing.Suche in Google Scholar

Chakrabarty, Dipesh (2002): Habitations of Modernity: Essays in the Wake of Subaltern Studies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Suche in Google Scholar

Chandrasekhar, C. P., Ghosh, Jayati (2006): The Market that Failed: A Decade of Neoliberal Economic Reforms in India. New Delhi: LeftWord.Suche in Google Scholar

Chasin, Alexandra (2000): Selling Out: the Gay and Lesbian Movement Goes to the Market. New York: St. Martin’s Press.Suche in Google Scholar

Consolaro, Alessandra (2010): “Scrivere La Nazione E La Globalizzazione Sul Corpo Femminile: Il Mediorama Indiano”. In: Voci E Conflitti. Edited by Alessandra Consolaro, Alessandro Monti. Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 43–59.Suche in Google Scholar

Consolaro, Alessandra (2011): La Prosa Nella Cultura Letteraria Hindī dell’India Coloniale E Postcoloniale. Torino: Stampatori.Suche in Google Scholar

Consolaro, Alessandra (2014a): “Queer Visibility and Homophobia in Hindi Literature”. DEP Deportate, Esuli e Profughe, 25. http://www.unive.it/nqcontent.cfm?a_id=18891.Suche in Google Scholar

Consolaro, Alessandra (2014b): “Who Is Afraid of Shah Rukh Khan? Neoliberal India’s Fears Seen through a Cinematic Prism”. India and Fear: Anatomy of an Emotion. Special Issue of Governare la paura. Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies. http://governarelapaura.unibo.it/.Suche in Google Scholar

Cossio, Cecilia (2003): “Identità Imperfette. Gli Hijra Nella Letteratura Hindi”. Annali Di Cà Foscari XLII 3: 243–271.Suche in Google Scholar

D’Emilio, John (1983): “Capitalism and Gay Identity”. In: Powers of Desire: The Politics of Sexuality. Edited by Ann Snitow, Christine Stansell, Sharan Thompson. New York: Monthly Review Press, 100–113.Suche in Google Scholar

DeLong, J. Bradford (2003): “India Since Independence: An Analytic Growth Narrative”. In: In Search of Prosperity: Analytic Narratives on Economic Growth. Edited by Dani Rodrik. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 184–204.10.1515/9781400845897-009Suche in Google Scholar

Deshpande, Sudhanva (2005): “The Consumable Hero of Globalised India”. In: Bollyworld: Popular Indian Cinema through a Transnational Lens. Edited by Raminder Kaur, Ajay J. Sinha. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 186–203.Suche in Google Scholar

Donner, Henrike (2011): Being Middle-class in India: A Way of Life. New York: Routledge.10.4324/9780203148532Suche in Google Scholar

Dutoya, Virginie (2016): “Defining the “Queers” in India: the Politics of Academic Representation”. India Review 15.2: 241–271.10.1080/14736489.2016.1165570Suche in Google Scholar

Dutta, Aniruddha (2013): “An Epistemology of Collusion: Hijras, Kothis and the Historical (Dis)continuity of Gender/Sexual Identities in Eastern India”. In: Gender History Across Epistemologies. Edited by Donna R. Gabaccia, Mary Jo Maynes. Chichester: Blackwell, 305–329.10.1002/9781118508206.ch14Suche in Google Scholar

Edelman, Lee (2004): No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive. Durham: Duke University Press.10.2307/j.ctv11hpkppSuche in Google Scholar

Fanon, Frantz (2008): Black Skin, White Masks. London: Pluto press.Suche in Google Scholar

Ghosh, Jayati (2005): “The Indian Economy (1970-2003)”. In: The Cambridge Economic History of India, Vol. 2. Edited by D. Kumar. New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1027–1045.Suche in Google Scholar

Gibson-Graham, J. K. (1996): The End of Capitalism (As We Knew it): A Feminist Critique of Political Economy. London: Blackwell.10.1177/030981689706200111Suche in Google Scholar

Halberstam, Judith-Jack (2011): The Queer Art of Failure. Durham: Duke University Press.10.2307/j.ctv11sn283Suche in Google Scholar

Hocquenghem, Guy (1993): Homosexual Desire, trans. by Daniella Dangoor. Durham: Duke University Press.Suche in Google Scholar

Jeffrey, Robin (1997): “Advertising and Indian-Language Newspapers: How Capitalism Supports (Certain) Cultures and (Some) States, 1947-96”. Pacific Affairs 70.1: 57–84.10.2307/2761228Suche in Google Scholar

Joshi, Yuvraj (2012): “Respectable Queerness”. Columbia Human Rights Law Review 43.3. http://ssrn.com/abstract=2015349.Suche in Google Scholar

Kohli, Atul (2006): “Politics of Economic Growth in India, 1980-2005: Part I: the 1980s”. Economic and Political Weekly 41.13: 1251–1259.Suche in Google Scholar

Kole, Subir K. (2007): “Globalizing Queer? AIDS, Homophobia and the Politics of Sexual Identity in India”. Global Health 3.8. http://globalizationandhealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1744–8603–3–8.10.1186/1744-8603-3-8Suche in Google Scholar

Love, Heather (2007): Feeling Backwards: Loss and the Politics of Queer History. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.Suche in Google Scholar

MacDonald, S.B., Evans, J.E., Crum, D.L. (1995): New Tigers and Old Elephants:The Development Game in the Nineties and Beyond. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction.Suche in Google Scholar

Mankekar, Purnima (1999): Screening Culture, Viewing Politics: an Ethnography of Television, Womanhood, and Nation in Postcolonial India. Durham, N.C: Duke University Press.10.1515/9780822378242Suche in Google Scholar

Mazzarella, William (2003): Shoveling Smoke: Advertising and Globalization in Contemporary India. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.10.1515/9780822385196Suche in Google Scholar

Mishra, Sudesh (2009): “News from the Crypt: India, Modernity, and the West”. New Literary History 40.2: 315–344.10.1353/nlh.0.0094Suche in Google Scholar

Muñoz, José Esteban (2010): Cruising Utopia: the Then and There of Queer Futurity. New York: New York University Press.Suche in Google Scholar

Orsini, Francesca (2012) “Writing Work in Hindi”. Paper presented at the 22nd European Conference on South Asian Studies. Lisbon.Suche in Google Scholar

Pandey, Gyanendra (2009): “Can There Be a Subaltern Middle Class? Notes on African American and Dalit History”. Public Culture 21.2: 321–342.10.1215/08992363-2008-031Suche in Google Scholar

Pashupati, K., Sengupta, S. (1996): “Advertising in India: the Winds of Change”. In: Advertising in Asia: Communication, Culture and Consumption. Edited by K. T. Frith. Ames: Iowa State University Press, 155–186.Suche in Google Scholar

Phadke, Shilpa, Khan, Sameera, Ranade, Shilpa (2011): Why Loiter? Women and Risk on Mumbai Streets. New Delhi: Penguin India.Suche in Google Scholar

Rodrik, Dani, Subramanian, Arvind (2005): “From “Hindu Growth” to Productivity Surge: the Mystery of the Indian Growth Transition”. IMF Staff Papers 52.2: 193–228.10.3386/w10376Suche in Google Scholar

Säävälä, Minna (2012): Middle-class Moralities: Everyday Struggle over Belonging and Prestige in India. Hyderabad: Orient Blackswan.Suche in Google Scholar

Sandage, Scott (2005): Born Losers: A History of Failure in America. America. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.10.4159/9780674043053Suche in Google Scholar

Scott, James C. (1999): Seeing like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven: Yale University Press.Suche in Google Scholar

Sen, Kunal (2007): “Why Did the Elephant Start to Trot? India’s Growth Acceleration Re-Examined”. Economic and Political Weekly 42.43: 37–47.Suche in Google Scholar

Sender, Katherine (2004): Business, Not Politics: the Making of the Gay Market. New York: Columbia University Press.10.7312/send12734Suche in Google Scholar

Sharma, Maya (2006): Loving Women: Being Lesbian in Unprivileged India. New Delhi: Yoda Press.Suche in Google Scholar

Sinha, J. B. P. (1994): The Cultural Context of Leadership and Power. New Delhi: Sage Publications.Suche in Google Scholar

Stockton, Kathryn Bond (2009): The Queer Child, or Growing Sideways in the Twentieth Century. Durham: Duke University Press.10.1215/9780822390268Suche in Google Scholar

Sukthankar, Ashwini (1999): Facing the Mirror: Lesbian Writing from India. Delhi: Penguin India.Suche in Google Scholar

Thadani, Giti (1996): Sakhiyani. Lesbian Desire in Ancient and Modern India. London: Cassel.Suche in Google Scholar

van Wessel, Margit (2004): “Talking about Consumption. How an Indian Middle Class Dissociates from Middle-Class Life”. Cultural Dynamics 16.1: 93–116.10.1177/0921374004042752Suche in Google Scholar

Vanita, Ruth / Kidwai, Saleem (2000): Same Sex Love in India. New York: St. Martin’s Press.10.1007/978-1-349-62183-5Suche in Google Scholar

Varma, P. K. (1999): The Great Indian Middle Class. New Delhi: Penguin.Suche in Google Scholar

Walker, Kristen (2000): “Capitalism, Gay Identity and International Human Rights Law”. Australasian Gay and Lesbian Law Journal 9: 58–73.Suche in Google Scholar

Published Online: 2020-03-14
Published in Print: 2020-03-26

© 2019 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Heruntergeladen am 16.12.2025 von https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/asia-2019-0052/html
Button zum nach oben scrollen