Talks by Debanuj DasGupta
Sexing the Region: Thinking about Transgender Identities in South Asia , 2020
Gender identity and sexuality politics in South Asia can be conceived of as spatial, temporal, an... more Gender identity and sexuality politics in South Asia can be conceived of as spatial, temporal, and corporeal convergences. In recent times South Asia has been witness to major environmental disasters such as the earthquakes in Nepal, major floods in India and Bangladesh, as well as regional imbalances in the circulation of global capital. These disparate nature-culture-capital interactions potentially converge to create specific spatial/sexual formations such as dislocations and relocations of diverse queer subjects. This panel builds upon scholarship related to sex and development (through connecting the local and the global, nature-culture and capital. Since the 1990's international development projects in South Asia have begun to think about the interconnections of economic inequality and sexuality largely through reproductive health and HIV/AIDS issues. This panel invites new thinking about how international development, unequal scales of globalization, rural/urban dislocations, and disaster management remain inter-imbricated with sexual(ity) politics in South Asia.
Building on these two key geographic claims, this panel calls for an intersectional understanding... more Building on these two key geographic claims, this panel calls for an intersectional understanding of queer and transgender migratory experiences across different routes. The panel seeks to highlight how the movement of the body in space is framed through long histories of gendered, racialized and sexualized border regimes, and that such regimes inform national narratives and shifting welfare regimes. From this perspective, the recent terror attacks in Bangladesh, Belgium, France, Germany, Turkey and the US can be understood as racialized and sexualized events. We welcome paper presentations that consider questions and themes such as: • Sexual identity formation and migratory processes. What are the shifting queer migration patterns? • Border control and national/international security as sexualized and racialized processes. • What kinds of spatiality is effected through such processes? • Migration, mobility and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender asylum seekers • Queer nationalisms in the global north and how they respond to (or are constituted in and through) migration from global south.
This paper interrogates the virtual networks of runaway and delinquent young men/boys engaged wit... more This paper interrogates the virtual networks of runaway and delinquent young men/boys engaged with Prajaak Development Society in Kolkata, India. Established in 1997 Praajak has been working around issues of sexual health, preventing sexual abuse and gender equity within friendship networks of young men/boys living in railway platforms and state operated run-away shelters within Kolkata, and related peri-urban railway junctions. Prajaak mobilizes the friendship networks toward juridico-political activism related to the rights of railway children. The volunteers forge intimate bonds with each other on digital platforms such as Facebook, which remain in excess of Prajaak’s territorial dimension. The screen, body, and digital intimacy forged by the young men present a rather queer time and space in contrast to the developmentalist time of Prajaak Developmental Society, which seeks to facilitate the re-entry of the delinquent boys into mainstream Indian society. The paper considers the substance of virtual intimacies forged by the young boys in order to understand the ways their bodies take on a deterritorialiazing and reterritorializing dimension through online and offline spaces.
Intimate Subjects, Oblique Objects, and Viral Intimacies: Trans/national Scales, Performativity a... more Intimate Subjects, Oblique Objects, and Viral Intimacies: Trans/national Scales, Performativity and the Aesthetics of Queer Activisms in India.
Panel Organizer: Debanuj DasGupta. Doctoral Candidate. Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. The Ohio State University.
Dasgupta.18@buckeyemail.osu.edu
Discussant: Dr. Niharika Bannerjea. Associate Professor. Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminal Justice Studies. University of Southern Indiana.
nbanerjea@usi.edu
Presenters:
Kaustavi Sarkar. Doctoral Student. Department of Dance. The Ohio State University.
Mahari Then and Now, Queering Performativity in Odissi
Debanuj DasGupta. Doctoral Candidate. Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. The Ohio State University.
Viral Friendships, (Dis)embodied Intimacies, and Local Activisms: Situating bodies and pleasures among friendship network of delinquent young men in Kolkata, India.
Dr. Paul Boyce. Lecturer. Department of Anthropology. University of Sussex.
Subject, Objects, and Secrets: Misrecognizing Same-Sex Sexualities in West Bengal as a Viewpoint for Anthropological Ignorance in Modernity.
Rohit DasGupta. Doctoral Candidate. London College of Communication.
Queering cyberspace in Kolkata, India.
Dr. Aniruddha Dutta. Assistant Professor. Gender and Women’s Studies. The University of Iowa.
Queer Globalization and the De/Construction of Scale: Metro centrism, Structural Violence and Resistance in Eastern India
Panel Abstract:
Recent approaches to Queer shift from naming intersectional identities towards an understanding of affective assemblages (Puar, 2005; Rai 2009), oblique orientations (Ahmed, 2006), critique of liberal notions of freedom and ethics (Dave, 2012; Winnubst, 2008; Reddy, 2012), and intimate dependencies (Povinelli, 2011; Shah 2012). Intimacies across screen/body interfaces between strangers, transnational activist rhetoric, and embodied aesthetics are brought to bear upon the oblique orientations of post-Marxian West Bengal, and it’s neighboring state of Orissa. The panel proposes moving away from global gay imaginaries of liberal rights based legal activisms towards small towns, resistance against violence upon aberrant bodies, and viral friendship networks. While a lot has been written about the ethics, and everyday practices of Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/and Transgender activism, which hover around the state and juridical domain in India (Bhaskaran, 2006; Boyce, 2012; Banerjea and DasGupta, 2013; Dave, 2012; Narrain and Bhan, 2006; Srivastava, 2004), this panel coheres around circuits of NGO activism, friendships across researcher/ activist positions, internet encounter between strangers, and the embodied aesthetics of queer performativity in India. Collectively the panelists disidentify with the “here and now” (Munoz, 2009) of liberal gay modernities, obliquely orienting ourselves towards critical post/colonial, then and there of future intimacies.
Reference:
Banerjea, N & DasGupta,D. 2013. “States of Desire: Homonationalism and LGBT Activism in India” Sanhati. June, 06. 2013. Appears at http://sanhati.com/articles/7185/ Accessed on 12/15/13
Bhaskaran, S. 2004. Made in India: Decolonizations, Queer Sexualities, Trans/National Projects. New York, NY: Palgrave McMillan.
Boyce, P. 2012. “The Ambivalent Sexual Subject: HIV Prevention and Male to Male Intimacy in India” in Understanding Global Sexualities: New Frontiers. Edited by Peter Aggleton, Paul Boyce, Henrietta L. Moore and Richard Parker. New York & London: Routledge: Taylor & Francis Group.
Dave,N. 2012. Queer Activism in India. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Narrain, A & Bhan, G. 2006. Because I Have A Voice: Queer Politics in India. New Delhi, India: Yoda Press.
Puar, J. 2007. Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer times.
Povinelli, E. 2011. Economies of Abandonment: Social Belonging and Abandonment in Late Liberalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Rai, A.2009. Untimely Bollywood: Globalization and India’s New Media Assemblage. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Reddy,C. 2011. Freedom with Violence: Race, Sexuality, and the US State. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Shah, N. 2012. Stranger Intimacy: Contesting Race, Sexuality, and the Law in the North American West. University of California Press.
Srivastava, S. 2004. Sexual Sites, Seminal Attitudes: Sexualities, Masculinities, and Culture in South Asia. London & New Delhi: SAGE Publications.
Winnubst,S. 2006. Queering Freedom. Bloomington & Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press.
Stories, Journeys, and Dance
January 31, 3-5pm
Doors Open at 2:45pm
Refreshments will be Serve... more Stories, Journeys, and Dance
January 31, 3-5pm
Doors Open at 2:45pm
Refreshments will be Served
Round Room, The Ohio Union
The Ohio State University
The Multicultural Center for Embodied Aesthetics (MCCA), a brand new Graduate Student Formation at the Ohio State University is organizing an evening of enigmatic performances and path breaking conversations among scholars and students around dance, the aesthetics of politics, and social justice organizing.
The event brings together performances from our graduate student repertory theater, and panel featuring Dr.Ananya Chatterjea (Professor & Chair of Dance at University of Minnesota), Dr. Ila Nagar(Assistant Professor, Near Eastern Languages at the Ohio State University), Dr. Harmony Bench(Assistant Professor, Department of Dance at the Ohio State University), Dr.Guisela Latorre (Associate Professor, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies), and Dr. Manjon Vanewyk (Associate Professor and Director, Barnett Center for the Integrated Arts and Enterprise)
Our inaugural convergence focuses upon the aesthetics of social justice organizing. We shall showcase a poetry based dance piece about the Devadasi Pratha (Temple Dancer) critiquing bodily subjectivation, and proposing visions of embodied justice.
We request your company at this exciting convergence. Please arrive by 2:45pm. Evening panel and performances promptly begins at 3pm.
Co-Sponsors: Academic Initiatives at the Multicultural Center, the Department of Dance at OSU, the Diversity and Identity Studies Collective (DISCO), Performance and Politics Initiative at the Humanities Institute.
Dis/Abling Heteronormativity: Reading Queer Places, Practices, and Lives through a Disability Stu... more Dis/Abling Heteronormativity: Reading Queer Places, Practices, and Lives through a Disability Studies Framework.
is scheduled on Saturday, 4/13/2013, from 8:00 AM - 9:40 AM in Emerald Bay, Westin, Third Floor
Sponsorship(s):
Disability Specialty Group
Organizer(s):
Leonor Vanik - UIC-Chicago
Debanuj DasGupta - The Ohio State University
Chair(s):
Leonor Vanik - UIC-Chicago
Abstract(s):
8:00 AM Author(s): *Andrew Gorman-Murray - University of Western Sydney
Abstract Title: Queer domicide? LGBT displacement and home loss in disaster impact, response and recovery
8:15 AM Author(s): *Marian Mustoe - Eastern Oregon University
Abstract Title: Trans Substantiation: Integrating the transgender experience within the religious political landscape of Anchorage, Alaska.
8:30 AM Author(s): *Debanuj DasGupta, Doctoral Student - The Ohio State University
Abstract Title: (Dis)ability Regimes and the Precarious Queer Migrant Body
8:45 AM Discussant: Debanuj DasGupta - The Ohio State University
Discussant(s):
Debanuj DasGupta - The Ohio State University
Session Description: This session critically examines queer places, practices, and lives through the lens of disability/crip theory. Both disability studies and queer theory are centrally concerned with how bodies, pleasures, and identities are represented as "normal" or as abject. Queer and disability scholarship(and activisms ) "share a will to remake the world, given the ways in which injustice, oppression, and hierarchy are built (sometimes quite literally) into the structures of contemporary society" (McRuer, 2012). Queering space calls for questioning the supposedly stable relationship between sex, gender, sexual desire and sexual practice (Browne, Lim, and Brown,2009). Similarly, disability studies calls for re-examining notions of a functional body, and questions the stable relationships between gender, desire, and bodily abilities (Bruggemann,2009; Mcruer 2006). The disabled body is a queer body, since it is always located outside the norm (functional body). Further, a disabled body is always read as either an asexual body or a body with improper sexuality (Bruggemann, 2009; McRuer 2006). This panel interrogates regimes of racialized, sexualized, gendered (hetro)normativity and citizenship by centering a (dis)ability studies approach within queer studies. The presenters interrogate regimes of inclusion/exclusion, visibility/invisibility along with attempts of life-making by bodies which inhabit crippling intersections of race, class, (trans)gender, sexuality and non-urban locations.
References:
Browne,K. Lim, J. & Brown,G. 2009. Eds. Geographies of Sexualities:Theory, Practices, and Politics. Surrey, England & Burlington, USA: Asshgate Publishing Ltd.
Bruggemann. J,B. 2009. Deaf Subjects: Between Identities and Places. NYU Press.
Mc.Ruer. R. 2006. Crip Theory:Signs of Queerness and Disability.
---------------2012. "Cripping Queer Politics, or the Dangers of Neoliberalism" in A New Queer Agenda. Scholar&Feminist Online. Issue 10.1-10.2 | Fall 2011/Spring 2012. Appears at http://sfonline.barnard.edu/a-new-queer-agenda/cripping-queer-politics-or-the-dangers-of-neoliberalism/ Accessed on 10/23/2012.
Queerly Precarious; documenting the politics of survival and place making within queer immigrant ... more Queerly Precarious; documenting the politics of survival and place making within queer immigrant collectives in US/global cities
Debanuj DasGupta (Ohio State University, United States)
Much has been written about Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) organizing within US/global cities such as San-Francisco, New York, and Chicago, yet not much has been documented about the organizing trajectories of LGBT identified immigrants. LGBT identified immigrants live and organize at the intersections of largely heteronormative migrant spaces and dominant US LGBT spaces. Such intersections render LGBT immigrants invisible rather precarious within the highly securitized US nation state. This paper documents fragment of such precarity and attempts toward claiming a livable life by LGBT identified immigrant collectives in New York City during and after 9/11. The paper focuses upon political documents such as the first national queer and transgender vision statement on immigration reform and the cultural production “Tara’s Crossing.” The cultural production documents the abuse faced by an Indo-Guyanese transgender refugee within US detention facility while awaiting decision on her asylum application. In conclusion, I contend that the politics of survival and place making within LGBT identified immigrant collectives allow us to reimagine US/global cities such as New York City as sites of continuous collective political labor and precarious living.
Cartographies of Friendship, Desire, and Home; Notes on surviving neoliberal security regimes.
... more Cartographies of Friendship, Desire, and Home; Notes on surviving neoliberal security regimes.
Abstract: In this auto-ethnographic essay I shed light upon processes of racialization and sexualization which work to construct the figure of the disabled, diseased, alien. I shed light upon global circuits of migration, pre and post 9/11 US national security practices by retracing lived experiences of mine from Kolkata, India and post 9/11 New York City. The narrative journeys to sites such as HIV clinics, S&M chambers, and hospital rooms in hopes of undersatnding collective claims to life being made by those marked as in-between figures of life and death within transnational circuits of labor, capital, ability regimes, and national security practices.
Author Name: Debanuj DasGupta, Doctoral Student & Graduate Teaching Associate
Academic Affiliation: The Department of Women's, Gender& Sexuality Studies.The Ohio State University.
Rationale:
This panel engages in a conversation about deploying feminisms within multiple registe... more Rationale:
This panel engages in a conversation about deploying feminisms within multiple registers: non-governmental organizations, mixed status queer immigrant collectives, documentary films and same-sex support groups. How does the work of gender queer theories, feminist understandings of human rights, and social activism resonate with the lives of marginalized collectives? This panel offers four perspectives on the ways feminisms reshape our understanding of rights, identity and agency across transnational spaces
Sponsor:
Deploying Feminisms
Schedule Information:
Scheduled Time: Sun, Nov 13 - 8:00am - 9:15am Building/Room: Level 1, Atlanta 1 - AV
Title Displayed in Event Calendar: Deploying feminisms transnationally: in conversations with NGOs, filmmakers, queer immigrant collectives and same-sex support groups.
Session Participants:
The ‘Right’ Image: Representing Women’s Rights in Documentary Film
*Swati Bandi (State University of New York, Buffalo)
“Ami Samakami”: Same-sex desires and community in Kolkata
*Niharika Banerjea (University of Southern Indiana)
Extraterrestrial Queers Fly Over the Equality Rainbow: Reflections on the Politics of Queerness, Immigration Reform & Radical Love.
*Debanuj Dasgupta (The Ohio State University)
Engendering the non-governmental organization movement in India
*Raili Roy (The Ohio State University)
Moderator: Srirupa Prasad (University of Missouri, Columbia)
Abstract:
none.
The politics of “differential consciousness” and “Queer Diasporas” as elucidated by Chela Sandova... more The politics of “differential consciousness” and “Queer Diasporas” as elucidated by Chela Sandoval and Gayatri Gopinath respectively, has come to define a large terrain of feminist and Queer organizing (often loosely defined as “US third world feminisms” and “Queers of Color” critique) in the US/West currently. In this article I deploy these key concepts to illuminate the resistance mounted against neoliberal citizenship discourses by Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgender/Queer (LGBTQ) identified (im)migrants of color in the US. I will situate the conflicts and agreements generated during the drafting of the first national "Queer and Transgender Vision Statement on Immigration Reform in the US” within a range of rhetorical frameworks which exist within both the transnational (im)migrant rights and LGBTQ rights movements. Claims to sexual and economic citizenship (marriage, rights of taxpaying citizens) within the neoliberal state structure is the dominant trope within both these movements, along with the trope of 'family reunion' (rights of US citizens to sponsor their immigrant partners, protection of the heteronormative immigrant family). In conclusion, I contend that within the migration patterns, organizing rhetoric, and community organizing strategies of LGBT (im)migrants of color lie possibilities of disrupting neoliberal security regimes and tropes of sexual citizenship.
Debanuj DasGupta, Department of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. The Ohio State University; Dasgupta.18@buckeyemail.osu.edu
In February 2007 a group of about fifty Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer (LGBTQ) and Im... more In February 2007 a group of about fifty Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer (LGBTQ) and Immigrant rights organizations released the first national "Queer and Transgender Vision Statement on immigration reform in the US." The statement was meant to create a set of guiding principles that addressed the intersections of queerness and immigration reform while highlighting the voices of LGBTQ immigrant rights organizers. However, the very process of its creation was fraught with contradictions and challenges that are inherent in these intersections. In this paper I will situate the conflicts and agreements that emerged during the drafting of the statement within a range of rhetorical frameworks which exist within both the immigrant rights and LGBTQ rights movements. Claims to sexual and economic citizenship (marriage, rights of tax paying citizens) within the neoliberal state structure is the dominant trope within both these movements, along with the trope of 'family reunion' (rights of US citizens to sponsor their immigrant partners, protection of the heteronormative immigrant family). Critical voices that seek to shift such normalizing tropes by highlighting struggles of LGBTQ immigrants of color, poor LGBTQ communities, and undocumented immigrants exist within both these movements. In conclusion I contend that in organizing strategies of LGBTQ immigrants which attend to the intersections of race, class, gender, (dis)ability, and sexuality, while privileging the voices of the undocumented and non-normative families lie possibilities of disrupting the neoliberal tropes of equality within the LGBTQ rights as well as the immigrant rights movement.
Papers by Debanuj DasGupta
Human Geography, 2019
Immigration procedures related to asylum and detention are based on sex/gender binaries. Such bin... more Immigration procedures related to asylum and detention are based on sex/gender binaries. Such binaries frame the bodies of undocumented transgen-der asylum seekers as unintelligible to immigration law and subject them to intense trauma. The experiences of trauma and death of transgender detainees within detention centers is a spatialized experience. The assignment of detention cells based on birth gender, denial of hormones and live saving treatments constitute a racialized and gendered torture upon the body of the transgender detainee. The article attends to the narratives of transgender detainees within detention cell by analyzing the script of "Tara's Crossing," a play based on the narratives of transgender detainees and asylum seekers. The play was produced by LGBTQ immigrant right activists soon after the attacks on 9/11 and the intensification of detention and deportation as a part of national security procedures. Drawing upon the script of Tara's Crossing, along with activist archives such as flyers, newsletter articles, and radio interviews of Balmitra Vimal Prasad, the protagonist of the play, the article analyzes the ways in which the sex/gender binary is reiterated within the detention cell, as well as asylum procedures. I turn to the activism around Tara's Crossing and the present-day activism of transgender immigrants in order to show how trauma experienced by transgender detainees holds potential for creating coalitional oppositional politics.
Women's Studies in Communication
A B S T R A C T The question of refugee rights and immigrant entry to the UK presently has come u... more A B S T R A C T The question of refugee rights and immigrant entry to the UK presently has come under attack with the rise of nationalist sentiment and the exit of the UK from the European Union. The figure of the Muslim migrant has been normatively constructed to represent a limit to UK's multiculturalism (and, arguably globally). Such anti-Muslim sentiment operates via displacing racialized bodies from UK public culture. This article situates the ways in which racialized queer Muslim subjects attempt to maneuver structural racism and heteronormativity in the UK. The article argues that queer Muslim immigrants perceive queer spaces in Central London as white spaces. Secondly, we will analyze how the racialized queer Muslim subject creates ethno-racial specific spaces that are located outside central London. We argue that queer migration needs to be understood as an embodied experience by paying attention to how racialized queer Muslim migrants moves through multiple spaces in the city. The article develops a mixed method approach through an analysis of Ian Iqbal Rashid's film A Touch of Pink (2004) alongside Raisa Kabir's recent exhibition In/Visible Space: Reflections on the Realm of Dimensional Affect, Space and the Queer Racialised Self (Rich Mix, April, 2013) and the narrative of a gay identified working class Muslim immigrant male from East London. We argue that queer Muslim migrants reside on the margins of British symbolic culture through a non-belonging to one's religious identity. Such non-belonging is a spatialized experience. An analysis of the film, exhibition and our ethnography reveals the ways in which sexuality is constructed and conferred through racialization and creates precariously situated queer Muslim migrant subjects within present day UK.
Friendship As Social Justice Activism, 2018
This themed issue contributes to discussions of queer positionalities in the context of doing fie... more This themed issue contributes to discussions of queer positionalities in the context of doing fieldwork on/with queer-identified subjects. The point of departure being that the term queer has emerged to qualify a specific scholarship that contests normative orders in gender and sexuality, and that queering is a form of critique of multiple power relations that informs knowledge production. Normative sex and gender orders are reflected in the power-knowledge relations that produce 'queerness' as outsider, abnormal and subaltern. In order to challenge these normativities, the production of knowledge must be contested in its conception. Here we present the theoretical framework that grounds our themed issue as well a short summary of the articles in this series.
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Talks by Debanuj DasGupta
Panel Organizer: Debanuj DasGupta. Doctoral Candidate. Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. The Ohio State University.
Dasgupta.18@buckeyemail.osu.edu
Discussant: Dr. Niharika Bannerjea. Associate Professor. Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminal Justice Studies. University of Southern Indiana.
nbanerjea@usi.edu
Presenters:
Kaustavi Sarkar. Doctoral Student. Department of Dance. The Ohio State University.
Mahari Then and Now, Queering Performativity in Odissi
Debanuj DasGupta. Doctoral Candidate. Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. The Ohio State University.
Viral Friendships, (Dis)embodied Intimacies, and Local Activisms: Situating bodies and pleasures among friendship network of delinquent young men in Kolkata, India.
Dr. Paul Boyce. Lecturer. Department of Anthropology. University of Sussex.
Subject, Objects, and Secrets: Misrecognizing Same-Sex Sexualities in West Bengal as a Viewpoint for Anthropological Ignorance in Modernity.
Rohit DasGupta. Doctoral Candidate. London College of Communication.
Queering cyberspace in Kolkata, India.
Dr. Aniruddha Dutta. Assistant Professor. Gender and Women’s Studies. The University of Iowa.
Queer Globalization and the De/Construction of Scale: Metro centrism, Structural Violence and Resistance in Eastern India
Panel Abstract:
Recent approaches to Queer shift from naming intersectional identities towards an understanding of affective assemblages (Puar, 2005; Rai 2009), oblique orientations (Ahmed, 2006), critique of liberal notions of freedom and ethics (Dave, 2012; Winnubst, 2008; Reddy, 2012), and intimate dependencies (Povinelli, 2011; Shah 2012). Intimacies across screen/body interfaces between strangers, transnational activist rhetoric, and embodied aesthetics are brought to bear upon the oblique orientations of post-Marxian West Bengal, and it’s neighboring state of Orissa. The panel proposes moving away from global gay imaginaries of liberal rights based legal activisms towards small towns, resistance against violence upon aberrant bodies, and viral friendship networks. While a lot has been written about the ethics, and everyday practices of Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/and Transgender activism, which hover around the state and juridical domain in India (Bhaskaran, 2006; Boyce, 2012; Banerjea and DasGupta, 2013; Dave, 2012; Narrain and Bhan, 2006; Srivastava, 2004), this panel coheres around circuits of NGO activism, friendships across researcher/ activist positions, internet encounter between strangers, and the embodied aesthetics of queer performativity in India. Collectively the panelists disidentify with the “here and now” (Munoz, 2009) of liberal gay modernities, obliquely orienting ourselves towards critical post/colonial, then and there of future intimacies.
Reference:
Banerjea, N & DasGupta,D. 2013. “States of Desire: Homonationalism and LGBT Activism in India” Sanhati. June, 06. 2013. Appears at http://sanhati.com/articles/7185/ Accessed on 12/15/13
Bhaskaran, S. 2004. Made in India: Decolonizations, Queer Sexualities, Trans/National Projects. New York, NY: Palgrave McMillan.
Boyce, P. 2012. “The Ambivalent Sexual Subject: HIV Prevention and Male to Male Intimacy in India” in Understanding Global Sexualities: New Frontiers. Edited by Peter Aggleton, Paul Boyce, Henrietta L. Moore and Richard Parker. New York & London: Routledge: Taylor & Francis Group.
Dave,N. 2012. Queer Activism in India. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Narrain, A & Bhan, G. 2006. Because I Have A Voice: Queer Politics in India. New Delhi, India: Yoda Press.
Puar, J. 2007. Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer times.
Povinelli, E. 2011. Economies of Abandonment: Social Belonging and Abandonment in Late Liberalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Rai, A.2009. Untimely Bollywood: Globalization and India’s New Media Assemblage. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Reddy,C. 2011. Freedom with Violence: Race, Sexuality, and the US State. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Shah, N. 2012. Stranger Intimacy: Contesting Race, Sexuality, and the Law in the North American West. University of California Press.
Srivastava, S. 2004. Sexual Sites, Seminal Attitudes: Sexualities, Masculinities, and Culture in South Asia. London & New Delhi: SAGE Publications.
Winnubst,S. 2006. Queering Freedom. Bloomington & Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press.
January 31, 3-5pm
Doors Open at 2:45pm
Refreshments will be Served
Round Room, The Ohio Union
The Ohio State University
The Multicultural Center for Embodied Aesthetics (MCCA), a brand new Graduate Student Formation at the Ohio State University is organizing an evening of enigmatic performances and path breaking conversations among scholars and students around dance, the aesthetics of politics, and social justice organizing.
The event brings together performances from our graduate student repertory theater, and panel featuring Dr.Ananya Chatterjea (Professor & Chair of Dance at University of Minnesota), Dr. Ila Nagar(Assistant Professor, Near Eastern Languages at the Ohio State University), Dr. Harmony Bench(Assistant Professor, Department of Dance at the Ohio State University), Dr.Guisela Latorre (Associate Professor, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies), and Dr. Manjon Vanewyk (Associate Professor and Director, Barnett Center for the Integrated Arts and Enterprise)
Our inaugural convergence focuses upon the aesthetics of social justice organizing. We shall showcase a poetry based dance piece about the Devadasi Pratha (Temple Dancer) critiquing bodily subjectivation, and proposing visions of embodied justice.
We request your company at this exciting convergence. Please arrive by 2:45pm. Evening panel and performances promptly begins at 3pm.
Co-Sponsors: Academic Initiatives at the Multicultural Center, the Department of Dance at OSU, the Diversity and Identity Studies Collective (DISCO), Performance and Politics Initiative at the Humanities Institute.
is scheduled on Saturday, 4/13/2013, from 8:00 AM - 9:40 AM in Emerald Bay, Westin, Third Floor
Sponsorship(s):
Disability Specialty Group
Organizer(s):
Leonor Vanik - UIC-Chicago
Debanuj DasGupta - The Ohio State University
Chair(s):
Leonor Vanik - UIC-Chicago
Abstract(s):
8:00 AM Author(s): *Andrew Gorman-Murray - University of Western Sydney
Abstract Title: Queer domicide? LGBT displacement and home loss in disaster impact, response and recovery
8:15 AM Author(s): *Marian Mustoe - Eastern Oregon University
Abstract Title: Trans Substantiation: Integrating the transgender experience within the religious political landscape of Anchorage, Alaska.
8:30 AM Author(s): *Debanuj DasGupta, Doctoral Student - The Ohio State University
Abstract Title: (Dis)ability Regimes and the Precarious Queer Migrant Body
8:45 AM Discussant: Debanuj DasGupta - The Ohio State University
Discussant(s):
Debanuj DasGupta - The Ohio State University
Session Description: This session critically examines queer places, practices, and lives through the lens of disability/crip theory. Both disability studies and queer theory are centrally concerned with how bodies, pleasures, and identities are represented as "normal" or as abject. Queer and disability scholarship(and activisms ) "share a will to remake the world, given the ways in which injustice, oppression, and hierarchy are built (sometimes quite literally) into the structures of contemporary society" (McRuer, 2012). Queering space calls for questioning the supposedly stable relationship between sex, gender, sexual desire and sexual practice (Browne, Lim, and Brown,2009). Similarly, disability studies calls for re-examining notions of a functional body, and questions the stable relationships between gender, desire, and bodily abilities (Bruggemann,2009; Mcruer 2006). The disabled body is a queer body, since it is always located outside the norm (functional body). Further, a disabled body is always read as either an asexual body or a body with improper sexuality (Bruggemann, 2009; McRuer 2006). This panel interrogates regimes of racialized, sexualized, gendered (hetro)normativity and citizenship by centering a (dis)ability studies approach within queer studies. The presenters interrogate regimes of inclusion/exclusion, visibility/invisibility along with attempts of life-making by bodies which inhabit crippling intersections of race, class, (trans)gender, sexuality and non-urban locations.
References:
Browne,K. Lim, J. & Brown,G. 2009. Eds. Geographies of Sexualities:Theory, Practices, and Politics. Surrey, England & Burlington, USA: Asshgate Publishing Ltd.
Bruggemann. J,B. 2009. Deaf Subjects: Between Identities and Places. NYU Press.
Mc.Ruer. R. 2006. Crip Theory:Signs of Queerness and Disability.
---------------2012. "Cripping Queer Politics, or the Dangers of Neoliberalism" in A New Queer Agenda. Scholar&Feminist Online. Issue 10.1-10.2 | Fall 2011/Spring 2012. Appears at http://sfonline.barnard.edu/a-new-queer-agenda/cripping-queer-politics-or-the-dangers-of-neoliberalism/ Accessed on 10/23/2012.
Debanuj DasGupta (Ohio State University, United States)
Much has been written about Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) organizing within US/global cities such as San-Francisco, New York, and Chicago, yet not much has been documented about the organizing trajectories of LGBT identified immigrants. LGBT identified immigrants live and organize at the intersections of largely heteronormative migrant spaces and dominant US LGBT spaces. Such intersections render LGBT immigrants invisible rather precarious within the highly securitized US nation state. This paper documents fragment of such precarity and attempts toward claiming a livable life by LGBT identified immigrant collectives in New York City during and after 9/11. The paper focuses upon political documents such as the first national queer and transgender vision statement on immigration reform and the cultural production “Tara’s Crossing.” The cultural production documents the abuse faced by an Indo-Guyanese transgender refugee within US detention facility while awaiting decision on her asylum application. In conclusion, I contend that the politics of survival and place making within LGBT identified immigrant collectives allow us to reimagine US/global cities such as New York City as sites of continuous collective political labor and precarious living.
Abstract: In this auto-ethnographic essay I shed light upon processes of racialization and sexualization which work to construct the figure of the disabled, diseased, alien. I shed light upon global circuits of migration, pre and post 9/11 US national security practices by retracing lived experiences of mine from Kolkata, India and post 9/11 New York City. The narrative journeys to sites such as HIV clinics, S&M chambers, and hospital rooms in hopes of undersatnding collective claims to life being made by those marked as in-between figures of life and death within transnational circuits of labor, capital, ability regimes, and national security practices.
Author Name: Debanuj DasGupta, Doctoral Student & Graduate Teaching Associate
Academic Affiliation: The Department of Women's, Gender& Sexuality Studies.The Ohio State University.
This panel engages in a conversation about deploying feminisms within multiple registers: non-governmental organizations, mixed status queer immigrant collectives, documentary films and same-sex support groups. How does the work of gender queer theories, feminist understandings of human rights, and social activism resonate with the lives of marginalized collectives? This panel offers four perspectives on the ways feminisms reshape our understanding of rights, identity and agency across transnational spaces
Sponsor:
Deploying Feminisms
Schedule Information:
Scheduled Time: Sun, Nov 13 - 8:00am - 9:15am Building/Room: Level 1, Atlanta 1 - AV
Title Displayed in Event Calendar: Deploying feminisms transnationally: in conversations with NGOs, filmmakers, queer immigrant collectives and same-sex support groups.
Session Participants:
The ‘Right’ Image: Representing Women’s Rights in Documentary Film
*Swati Bandi (State University of New York, Buffalo)
“Ami Samakami”: Same-sex desires and community in Kolkata
*Niharika Banerjea (University of Southern Indiana)
Extraterrestrial Queers Fly Over the Equality Rainbow: Reflections on the Politics of Queerness, Immigration Reform & Radical Love.
*Debanuj Dasgupta (The Ohio State University)
Engendering the non-governmental organization movement in India
*Raili Roy (The Ohio State University)
Moderator: Srirupa Prasad (University of Missouri, Columbia)
Abstract:
none.
Debanuj DasGupta, Department of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. The Ohio State University; Dasgupta.18@buckeyemail.osu.edu
Papers by Debanuj DasGupta
Panel Organizer: Debanuj DasGupta. Doctoral Candidate. Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. The Ohio State University.
Dasgupta.18@buckeyemail.osu.edu
Discussant: Dr. Niharika Bannerjea. Associate Professor. Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminal Justice Studies. University of Southern Indiana.
nbanerjea@usi.edu
Presenters:
Kaustavi Sarkar. Doctoral Student. Department of Dance. The Ohio State University.
Mahari Then and Now, Queering Performativity in Odissi
Debanuj DasGupta. Doctoral Candidate. Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. The Ohio State University.
Viral Friendships, (Dis)embodied Intimacies, and Local Activisms: Situating bodies and pleasures among friendship network of delinquent young men in Kolkata, India.
Dr. Paul Boyce. Lecturer. Department of Anthropology. University of Sussex.
Subject, Objects, and Secrets: Misrecognizing Same-Sex Sexualities in West Bengal as a Viewpoint for Anthropological Ignorance in Modernity.
Rohit DasGupta. Doctoral Candidate. London College of Communication.
Queering cyberspace in Kolkata, India.
Dr. Aniruddha Dutta. Assistant Professor. Gender and Women’s Studies. The University of Iowa.
Queer Globalization and the De/Construction of Scale: Metro centrism, Structural Violence and Resistance in Eastern India
Panel Abstract:
Recent approaches to Queer shift from naming intersectional identities towards an understanding of affective assemblages (Puar, 2005; Rai 2009), oblique orientations (Ahmed, 2006), critique of liberal notions of freedom and ethics (Dave, 2012; Winnubst, 2008; Reddy, 2012), and intimate dependencies (Povinelli, 2011; Shah 2012). Intimacies across screen/body interfaces between strangers, transnational activist rhetoric, and embodied aesthetics are brought to bear upon the oblique orientations of post-Marxian West Bengal, and it’s neighboring state of Orissa. The panel proposes moving away from global gay imaginaries of liberal rights based legal activisms towards small towns, resistance against violence upon aberrant bodies, and viral friendship networks. While a lot has been written about the ethics, and everyday practices of Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/and Transgender activism, which hover around the state and juridical domain in India (Bhaskaran, 2006; Boyce, 2012; Banerjea and DasGupta, 2013; Dave, 2012; Narrain and Bhan, 2006; Srivastava, 2004), this panel coheres around circuits of NGO activism, friendships across researcher/ activist positions, internet encounter between strangers, and the embodied aesthetics of queer performativity in India. Collectively the panelists disidentify with the “here and now” (Munoz, 2009) of liberal gay modernities, obliquely orienting ourselves towards critical post/colonial, then and there of future intimacies.
Reference:
Banerjea, N & DasGupta,D. 2013. “States of Desire: Homonationalism and LGBT Activism in India” Sanhati. June, 06. 2013. Appears at http://sanhati.com/articles/7185/ Accessed on 12/15/13
Bhaskaran, S. 2004. Made in India: Decolonizations, Queer Sexualities, Trans/National Projects. New York, NY: Palgrave McMillan.
Boyce, P. 2012. “The Ambivalent Sexual Subject: HIV Prevention and Male to Male Intimacy in India” in Understanding Global Sexualities: New Frontiers. Edited by Peter Aggleton, Paul Boyce, Henrietta L. Moore and Richard Parker. New York & London: Routledge: Taylor & Francis Group.
Dave,N. 2012. Queer Activism in India. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Narrain, A & Bhan, G. 2006. Because I Have A Voice: Queer Politics in India. New Delhi, India: Yoda Press.
Puar, J. 2007. Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer times.
Povinelli, E. 2011. Economies of Abandonment: Social Belonging and Abandonment in Late Liberalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Rai, A.2009. Untimely Bollywood: Globalization and India’s New Media Assemblage. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Reddy,C. 2011. Freedom with Violence: Race, Sexuality, and the US State. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Shah, N. 2012. Stranger Intimacy: Contesting Race, Sexuality, and the Law in the North American West. University of California Press.
Srivastava, S. 2004. Sexual Sites, Seminal Attitudes: Sexualities, Masculinities, and Culture in South Asia. London & New Delhi: SAGE Publications.
Winnubst,S. 2006. Queering Freedom. Bloomington & Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press.
January 31, 3-5pm
Doors Open at 2:45pm
Refreshments will be Served
Round Room, The Ohio Union
The Ohio State University
The Multicultural Center for Embodied Aesthetics (MCCA), a brand new Graduate Student Formation at the Ohio State University is organizing an evening of enigmatic performances and path breaking conversations among scholars and students around dance, the aesthetics of politics, and social justice organizing.
The event brings together performances from our graduate student repertory theater, and panel featuring Dr.Ananya Chatterjea (Professor & Chair of Dance at University of Minnesota), Dr. Ila Nagar(Assistant Professor, Near Eastern Languages at the Ohio State University), Dr. Harmony Bench(Assistant Professor, Department of Dance at the Ohio State University), Dr.Guisela Latorre (Associate Professor, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies), and Dr. Manjon Vanewyk (Associate Professor and Director, Barnett Center for the Integrated Arts and Enterprise)
Our inaugural convergence focuses upon the aesthetics of social justice organizing. We shall showcase a poetry based dance piece about the Devadasi Pratha (Temple Dancer) critiquing bodily subjectivation, and proposing visions of embodied justice.
We request your company at this exciting convergence. Please arrive by 2:45pm. Evening panel and performances promptly begins at 3pm.
Co-Sponsors: Academic Initiatives at the Multicultural Center, the Department of Dance at OSU, the Diversity and Identity Studies Collective (DISCO), Performance and Politics Initiative at the Humanities Institute.
is scheduled on Saturday, 4/13/2013, from 8:00 AM - 9:40 AM in Emerald Bay, Westin, Third Floor
Sponsorship(s):
Disability Specialty Group
Organizer(s):
Leonor Vanik - UIC-Chicago
Debanuj DasGupta - The Ohio State University
Chair(s):
Leonor Vanik - UIC-Chicago
Abstract(s):
8:00 AM Author(s): *Andrew Gorman-Murray - University of Western Sydney
Abstract Title: Queer domicide? LGBT displacement and home loss in disaster impact, response and recovery
8:15 AM Author(s): *Marian Mustoe - Eastern Oregon University
Abstract Title: Trans Substantiation: Integrating the transgender experience within the religious political landscape of Anchorage, Alaska.
8:30 AM Author(s): *Debanuj DasGupta, Doctoral Student - The Ohio State University
Abstract Title: (Dis)ability Regimes and the Precarious Queer Migrant Body
8:45 AM Discussant: Debanuj DasGupta - The Ohio State University
Discussant(s):
Debanuj DasGupta - The Ohio State University
Session Description: This session critically examines queer places, practices, and lives through the lens of disability/crip theory. Both disability studies and queer theory are centrally concerned with how bodies, pleasures, and identities are represented as "normal" or as abject. Queer and disability scholarship(and activisms ) "share a will to remake the world, given the ways in which injustice, oppression, and hierarchy are built (sometimes quite literally) into the structures of contemporary society" (McRuer, 2012). Queering space calls for questioning the supposedly stable relationship between sex, gender, sexual desire and sexual practice (Browne, Lim, and Brown,2009). Similarly, disability studies calls for re-examining notions of a functional body, and questions the stable relationships between gender, desire, and bodily abilities (Bruggemann,2009; Mcruer 2006). The disabled body is a queer body, since it is always located outside the norm (functional body). Further, a disabled body is always read as either an asexual body or a body with improper sexuality (Bruggemann, 2009; McRuer 2006). This panel interrogates regimes of racialized, sexualized, gendered (hetro)normativity and citizenship by centering a (dis)ability studies approach within queer studies. The presenters interrogate regimes of inclusion/exclusion, visibility/invisibility along with attempts of life-making by bodies which inhabit crippling intersections of race, class, (trans)gender, sexuality and non-urban locations.
References:
Browne,K. Lim, J. & Brown,G. 2009. Eds. Geographies of Sexualities:Theory, Practices, and Politics. Surrey, England & Burlington, USA: Asshgate Publishing Ltd.
Bruggemann. J,B. 2009. Deaf Subjects: Between Identities and Places. NYU Press.
Mc.Ruer. R. 2006. Crip Theory:Signs of Queerness and Disability.
---------------2012. "Cripping Queer Politics, or the Dangers of Neoliberalism" in A New Queer Agenda. Scholar&Feminist Online. Issue 10.1-10.2 | Fall 2011/Spring 2012. Appears at http://sfonline.barnard.edu/a-new-queer-agenda/cripping-queer-politics-or-the-dangers-of-neoliberalism/ Accessed on 10/23/2012.
Debanuj DasGupta (Ohio State University, United States)
Much has been written about Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) organizing within US/global cities such as San-Francisco, New York, and Chicago, yet not much has been documented about the organizing trajectories of LGBT identified immigrants. LGBT identified immigrants live and organize at the intersections of largely heteronormative migrant spaces and dominant US LGBT spaces. Such intersections render LGBT immigrants invisible rather precarious within the highly securitized US nation state. This paper documents fragment of such precarity and attempts toward claiming a livable life by LGBT identified immigrant collectives in New York City during and after 9/11. The paper focuses upon political documents such as the first national queer and transgender vision statement on immigration reform and the cultural production “Tara’s Crossing.” The cultural production documents the abuse faced by an Indo-Guyanese transgender refugee within US detention facility while awaiting decision on her asylum application. In conclusion, I contend that the politics of survival and place making within LGBT identified immigrant collectives allow us to reimagine US/global cities such as New York City as sites of continuous collective political labor and precarious living.
Abstract: In this auto-ethnographic essay I shed light upon processes of racialization and sexualization which work to construct the figure of the disabled, diseased, alien. I shed light upon global circuits of migration, pre and post 9/11 US national security practices by retracing lived experiences of mine from Kolkata, India and post 9/11 New York City. The narrative journeys to sites such as HIV clinics, S&M chambers, and hospital rooms in hopes of undersatnding collective claims to life being made by those marked as in-between figures of life and death within transnational circuits of labor, capital, ability regimes, and national security practices.
Author Name: Debanuj DasGupta, Doctoral Student & Graduate Teaching Associate
Academic Affiliation: The Department of Women's, Gender& Sexuality Studies.The Ohio State University.
This panel engages in a conversation about deploying feminisms within multiple registers: non-governmental organizations, mixed status queer immigrant collectives, documentary films and same-sex support groups. How does the work of gender queer theories, feminist understandings of human rights, and social activism resonate with the lives of marginalized collectives? This panel offers four perspectives on the ways feminisms reshape our understanding of rights, identity and agency across transnational spaces
Sponsor:
Deploying Feminisms
Schedule Information:
Scheduled Time: Sun, Nov 13 - 8:00am - 9:15am Building/Room: Level 1, Atlanta 1 - AV
Title Displayed in Event Calendar: Deploying feminisms transnationally: in conversations with NGOs, filmmakers, queer immigrant collectives and same-sex support groups.
Session Participants:
The ‘Right’ Image: Representing Women’s Rights in Documentary Film
*Swati Bandi (State University of New York, Buffalo)
“Ami Samakami”: Same-sex desires and community in Kolkata
*Niharika Banerjea (University of Southern Indiana)
Extraterrestrial Queers Fly Over the Equality Rainbow: Reflections on the Politics of Queerness, Immigration Reform & Radical Love.
*Debanuj Dasgupta (The Ohio State University)
Engendering the non-governmental organization movement in India
*Raili Roy (The Ohio State University)
Moderator: Srirupa Prasad (University of Missouri, Columbia)
Abstract:
none.
Debanuj DasGupta, Department of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. The Ohio State University; Dasgupta.18@buckeyemail.osu.edu
Social networking sites and digital technologies have created opportunities for young people in India to establish virtual intimate connections. In this article, the authors analyze the intimate exchanges between young men on two different digital platforms – Facebook and Planet Romeo. An analysis of the intimate virtual exchanges reveals technologies of queer neoliberal subject formation within contemporary India. Queer neoliberal subject formation refers to the emergence of a sexual subject of rights, one that is a consumer-citizen within the Indian free-market economy. The article highlights two ways in which bodies are being queered within present day India. First, the authors discuss the case of run-away young men, whose bodies are marked as failure, a kind of ‘delinquent’ subject by an ensemble of state and civil-society formations. The young men are escaping violence from male elders, and poor living conditions in peri-urban Kolkata. Their bodies come to signify a queer figure within neoliberal notions of success and enterprise. Second, they interrogate the ways in which homosexuality is an emergent juridico–political category in India. The Supreme Court of India ruling on 11 December 2013, which reinstated the anti-sodomy provisions of the Indian Penal Code (IPC 377), is the site for the sedimentation of ‘homosexual’ as a subject of legal rights. The homosexual is being presented as a subject of conjugal love. Conjugality is represented as a private good, as the right to consume intimacy within private space. Representation of intimacy and celebration of conjugal love is found through the growth of dating websites in India along with the proliferation of media texts such as memes, poems and illustrative images found online commemorating conjugality. Our ethnographic analysis of the virtual exchanges among runaway young men and young gay identified men reveal how neoliberal subject formation in India remains incomplete.
Keywords
affect, intimacy, modernity, neoliberalism, subjectivities, virtual
Queering Digital Activisms, Intimacies and Subjectivities (in) South Asia
Panel Organisers: Debanuj Dasgupta, The Ohio State University, USA
Rohit K Dasgupta, University of Southampton, UK
Call for papers
III European Geographies of Sexualities Conference. “Crossing Boundaries: Sexuality, Media, and (Urban) Spaces.” Rome, 16-18th September, 2015.
Digital technologies play an important role in the shaping the relation between queer bodies, identities and the State. The role of contemporary digital media (grindr, Planet Romeo, Facebook, different smart-phone apps) in reshaping communication and advocacy within queer communities in the West is well documented (Pullen and Cooper, 2010; Mowlabocus, 2010; McGlotten, 2013), however there has been little work which has been done on non western sexual cultures. In this panel we propose to interrogate the role of digital culture within queer ‘communities’ in South Asia. The digital/virtual space whilst hailed as a disembodied utopic space where signifiers of gender, race and class cease to exist (Rheingold, 2003), we believe it has instead become the very space that reflects and symbolises the anxieties and possibilities of inflection of these categories. Sexuality performs an important role in examining the attitudinal transformation and changes that are currently happening in South Asia- the emergence queer politics, intersectional politics, and assertion of disparate identities. We would welcome abstracts of 200 words focusing on South Asia, digital technologies, and queer/feminist politics. The panel seeks to question the relationship between online and offline spatio-temporal formations, how ideas about the West/East are negotiated through media assemblages? Non-representational approaches to bodies, pleasures, and digital technologies. Following are some of the themes we would like to highlight from the conference
- the spatialities of the (sexual) encounters favoured by media and technologies: do cities occupy a prominent role? What possibilities do media and technologies in low-density and rural areas offer?
- which possibilities are opened by transmediality in relation both to everyday (sexual) life and the research process itself? Do media and technologies make sexual dissidents’ lives more "liveable"?
- online (sexualized) communities: their aims, compositions, potentialities;
- media, technologies and (sexual) identity. How is desire expressed and reshaped?
- the production of new normativities: which new (sexualized) norms are (re)produced through these instruments?
- “hook-up” apps and social media: which possibilities do they offer? How do institutions use them to control, discipline and repress?
- the appropriation and use of these instruments by sex workers;
- queer politics, feminist politics, and activism online: new forms, possibilities and limits;
-contentious engagements between regional politics, feminist, and queer politics on the internet
- online performances and queer art;
Please send us your 200 word abstract and 50 word bio by 10th April to Debanuj Dasgupta (Dasgupta.18@osu.edu) AND Rohit K Dasgupta (r.k.dasgupta@soton.ac.uk)
In this paper we juxtapose the present day Supreme Court battles over the colonial anti-sodomy provisions in the Indian Penal Code (Section 377), with everyday interpretations of carnal intercourse by kotis and jananas in order to visibilize a whole different social world of carnality. The responses to the law coming from the civil society formations (namely the LGBT rights organizations, HIV/AIDS organizations and women’s rights organizations) is the site for the formation of a modern Indian homosexual subject, one who claims her/his rights to love and privacy through the language of human rights and constitutional freedom. We argue the arrival of the modern rights bearing homosexual subject is contested by political and religious formations through discourses of sin, unnaturality and proper sexual conduct. The contestation of religious discourse through discourse of constitutional rights covers over the creative interpretations of religion provided by kotis/jananas. An analysis of the kotis/janana discourse and bodily practices reveals sexual subject formation through creative reinterpretation of notions such as sin and unnaturality. In conclusion we contend the creative interpretations of religious themes by kotis/jananas trouble nationalist religious discourses as well as the constitutional discourses of the LGBT rights movement.
Recent scholarship in different disciplinary fields as well as activist literature have brought attention to the political possibilities within friendship. The essays, memoirs, poems, and artwork in Friendship as Social Justice Activism address these political possibilities within the context of gender, sexuality, and economic justice movements.
Recent scholarship in different disciplinary fields as well as activist literature have brought attention to the political possibilities within friendship. The essays, memoirs, poems, and artwork in Friendship as Social Justice Activism address these political possibilities within the context of gender, sexuality, and economic justice movements.
Niharika Banerjea, Debanuj DasGupta, Rohit K. Dasgupta, Aniruddha Dutta, Radhika Gajjala, Amit S. Rai and Jack Harrison-Quintana