Women, gender and sexuality: Changing historiographies of colonial India—A bibliographical essay

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 192-204
Author(s):  
Charu Gupta
Keyword(s):  
Women's Education ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Natural Category ◽  
Historical Processes ◽  
Dominant Discourses ◽  
Ways Of Being

Drawing on fragmentary examples from women’s histories in colonial India, this paper underlines the problems and possibilities in historiographies of modern India. Feminist scholars argue that the three terms—women, gender and sex—have often been used interchangeably. However, the commonsensical term woman is neither a natural category (of non-men) nor a homogeneous community (of sisterhood), for there are historically many ways of being a woman in different times. Further, gender is not merely a natural or biological identity of a person. It is a historical, social and political construction of how to be a man or a woman. Even sex is no longer seen as the biological ground upon which gender is constructed, as sexualities too are socially produced and regulated by dominant discourses, which establish one kind of sexuality as normal and relegate others into the domain of deviance, perversion or criminality. Through selective readings from discourses around women’s education and conceptualisation of the modern women in colonial India, the paper reflects on how a gender-sensitive perspective produces a more complex and textured view of historical processes. While patriarchies were recast in more powerful, though subtle ways, they were also subverted, or at least questioned, in colonial India.

Saint Ashley

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia De Bres ◽  
Shelley Dawson
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Director General ◽  
Commercial Products ◽  
Authority Figure ◽  
Dominant Discourses

During Covid-19 lockdown in New Zealand from March to June 2020, gendered discourses appeared in artistic and commercial products featuring Ashley Bloomfield, New Zealand’s Director General of Health and ‘hero of quarantine’. Using an analytical framework combining Foucauldian discourse analysis with critical multimodality, we explore how Ashley is shaped into existence through discourses portraying him as a superhero, love interest/sex symbol, national treasure, saviour, saint and authority figure. These emergent discourses ride on the wave of longstanding dominant discourses relating to gender and sexuality, alongside nation, class and ethnicity. While dominant discourses may provide reassurance when established realities are under threat, they simultaneously cause harm by reproducing unequal power relations between social groups. We contend that, even in periods of crisis, we should consider what broader messages we are sending when we latch onto the latest discursive trend.

scholarly journals Disrupting Deficit Discourses about Hmong Culture

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 10-18
Author(s):  
Bic Ngo
Keyword(s):  
White Supremacy ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Cultural Traditions ◽  
Hmong Americans ◽  
Dominant Discourses ◽  
Hmong Culture ◽  
Deficit Discourses

Dominant discourses persistently portray Hmong Americans as stuck in time and tied to Hmong cultural traditions. This article suggests dominant discourses about the oppression of Hmong culture are mechanisms of White supremacy. It examines research with Hmong Americans on gender and sexuality to disrupt deficit discourses about Hmong culture. It provides recommendations for teachers to counteract dominant discourses that instantiate the values, worldviews, culture and structures of White supremacy.  

scholarly journals Ramana Maharshi and the Colonial Encounter

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Alan Edwards
Keyword(s):  
Religious Identity ◽  
The Political ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Politics And Religion ◽  
Historical Processes ◽  
Ramana Maharshi ◽  
Colonial Encounter ◽  
Modern Era ◽  
Historical Periods

<p>Recent scholarship on Ramana Maharshi (1879-1950) follows the romanticism of hagiographical literature, presenting him as a purely spiritual and timeless figure, thus ignoring the political contours of colonial India. Scholarly literature, then, has effectively deracinated this internationally acclaimed figure from one of the most fascinating and transformative historical periods of the modern era. The current study seeks to correct ahistorical representations of Ramana Maharshi by considering the historical processes that determined his status as a Maharshi (Great Vedic Seer) and Advaitin. I aim to show that Ramana Maharshi's image as a timeless and purely spiritual figure actually locates him in his historical situation, and further, that his status as a Maharshi (Maharṣi) and Advaitin reflects the ways in which "the political‟ and "the spiritual‟ interacted during colonial India. This thesis will delineate the process by which Ramana's status as a Maharshi allowed his religious identity to shift from an unorthodox, localised, and ethnic-sectarian form to one in which he symbolised a religious authority in an orthodox and pan-Hindu way. In a broader context, then, this thesis seeks to address the following question: how, and to what extent, did colonial dynamics affect the ways that Hindus interpreted and represented their religious figures during the nationalist period? Here I will demonstrate that Ramana Maharshi represents a compelling case study in the ways in which Orientalist stereotypes about a "mystical East‟ affected the intersection of politics and religion in colonial India.</p>

The Perpetrators

2021 ◽  
pp. 140-178
Author(s):  
Deana Heath
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Violence ◽  
Group Dynamics ◽  
Police Officers ◽  
Psychological Processes ◽  
Key Factors ◽  
Cultural Characteristics ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Historical Processes ◽  
Institutional Structures ◽  
Indian Men

This chapter turns from the facilitation of torture to its perpetration. It endeavours to explicate the agency of the torturers, especially why they chose to do what they did, through analysing the key factors that transformed Indian police officers into perpetrators of torture, who the police tortured, and how they did so. Focusing on why sexual violence, in particular, became a key component of Indian policing, the chapter draws upon what Ervin Straub terms the ‘three levels’ of torture in order to elucidate the motivations and psychological processes that drove subaltern Indian men to become torturers, the particular group dynamics and institutional structures that led to the production of a culture of torture in the Indian police, and the historical processes and cultural characteristics that provided fertile ground for the emergence of torture and other forms of extreme harm doing. Since torturers are made, not born, the chapter suggests, in addition, that police torturers in colonial India be viewed not only as perpetrators of colonial violence but as victims of it.

scholarly journals Sexy selves: Girls, selfies and the performance of intersectional identities

2018 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marijke Naezer
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Social Norms ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Social Position ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Social Differentiation ◽  
Specific Context ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Performance Of Gender ◽  
Dominant Discourses

Teen girls’ ‘sexy selfies’ have become highly politicised over the last years, and while feminist scholars have comprehensively analysed present day discourses about this topic, research about teen girls’ own reflections is still scarce. Studies that did include girls’ voices demonstrated how girls’ navigations of sexiness are related to the performance of gender and sexuality. The present article, which is based on ethnographic fieldwork among Dutch young people, contributes to and extends this strand of research by exploring how girls’ navigations of sexy selfies are related to the performance of not just gender and sexuality, but also other intersecting axes of social differentiation, including axes that have remained undertheorised such as smartness, maturity and popularity. Through their navigations of sexy selfies, girls perform complex, intersectional identities in interaction with dominant discourses about sexiness, the materiality of their bodies, their social position and the specific context of self(ie)-making practices. Involving this complexity in discussions about sexy selfies can create promising opportunities for interrogating social norms, stereotypes and power inequalities.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document