"Left to the imagination" : Indian nationalisms and female sexuality in Trinidad
Document Type
Journal article
Source Publication
Public Culture
Publication Date
1-1-1999
Volume
11
Issue
1
First Page
223
Last Page
243
Publisher
Duke University Press
Abstract
Contrary to appearances, this essay is not about Trinidad or the West Indies; it is primarily an attempt to alter the lens through which we have been accustomed to viewing or framing the emergence of that discursive subject, the modern Indian woman. In analyzing the formation of woman in India, we often use, almost as though by default, the implicit comparisons with Western or metropolitan situations. I want to ask whether our frameworks might look different when the points of reference include other nonmetropolitan contexts. Also, what happens to our terms of comparison when the history of the context being compared with ours is entangled with our own, in ways that have been made invisible in the postcolonial present?
DOI
10.1215/08992363-11-1-223
Print ISSN
08992363
E-ISSN
15278018
Funding Information
The research was partly granted from the Homi Bhabha Fellowships Council, India, and the Sephis Programme for South-South Research, the Netherlands.
Publisher Statement
Copyright © 1999 by Duke University Press
Access to external full text or publisher's version may require subscription.
Additional Information
An earlier version of this article published in Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism, (2) (1997), 1-18.
This article also published in M. E. John & J. Nair (Eds.) (1998), A question of silence?: The sexual economies of modern India (pp. 111-138). New Delhi: Kali for Women.
This article also published in D. P. Gaonkar (Ed.) (2001), Alternative modernities (pp. 248-271). Durham: Duke University Press.
Full-text Version
Publisher’s Version
Language
English
Recommended Citation
Niranjana, T. (1999). "Left to the imagination": Indian nationalisms and female sexuality in Trinidad. Public Culture, 11(1), 223-243. doi: 10.1215/08992363-11-1-223