The Phobic and the Erotic

The Politics of Sexualities in Contemporary India

Edited by Brinda Bose and Subhabrata Bhattacharyya

 

6 x 9 inches, 527pp, 11 halftones. 2007

ISBN : 9781905422142

Rs  695.00 (PB)
$29.95 (PB)
£16.99 (PB)

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A flamboyantly eclectic anthology that explodes several current myths about lines that divide—the heterosexual from the homosexual, the normative from the ‘alternative’, the phobic from the obsessive, the moral from the titillating, the academic from the activist—and brings together a stunning array of serious, committed writing about what is both most visible and most hidden in our lives, our sexualities. While our social and cultural lives are determined by a fairly universal heterosexual normative code, this collection argues that it is imperative to recognize multiple sites and discourses as equally valid; it ‘outs’ the ‘alternative’. It is constructed on the premise that it is time to foreground those sexual choices and identities that are counter-hetero-normative as the sites at which the most significant politics are being played out. This anthology captures the complex issues, theories, contexts and debates crowding the sexualities arena in contemporary Indian social studies.

 

Brinda Bose is currently Fellow, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi. She has taught for 10 years at the Department of English, Hindu College, Delhi University, and researches in gender, postcolonial and cultural studies. Her recent publications include Translating Desire: The Politics of Gender and Culture in India (edited, 2003) and Gender and Censorship (edited, 2006).

 

Subhabrata Bhattacharyya is Head of the Department, Journalism and Mass Communication, and also teaches English at Surendranath College, Calcutta University.

 

Gender Studies
Culture Studies