Sexual Sites, Seminal Attitudes: Sexualities, Masculinities and Culture in South Asia

Discussions on sexuality in the South Asian context have tended to focus largely on men’s preoccupations through notions such as ‘semen-anxiety’. Another restrictive framework is the excessive importance ascribed to religion in everyday life. The result has been a rather narrow debate on sexuality. By providing accounts of the myriad sites and meanings of sexuality, this remarkable volume is designed to broaden the debate on sexuality in South Asia. It combines perspectives from history, anthropology and cultural and literary studies to provide an interdisciplinary exploration of the cultures of, and the multiple meanings and contestations that gather around, masculinities and sexualities. The collection is unique in the breadth of its theoretical concerns; its focus on hitherto marginalised sexual identities; and its novel juxtapositions of analyses of colonial discourses with those of postcolonised modernity. The topics covered include: colonial constructions of sexuality; domesticity and homoeroticism; alternative gender and sexual identities in modern theatrical and literary traditions; ethnographies of urban sexual identities; sexuality, women, ‘development’ and the nation state; and filmic cultures, commodity cultures and the construction of masculine and sexual identities. Widening our understanding of gender, power and modernity in the South Asian milieus, this volume will be of considerable interest to students and scholars in the fields of anthropology, gay and lesbian studies, gender studies, cultural studies, South Asian studies, history and sociology.