Transgressive territories: queer space in Indian fiction and film【翻译】

ABSTRACT
This dissertation argues that the representation of queer space in colonial and
postcolonial Indian fiction and film counters the marginalization of the sexual dissidents,
both in the Indian nation-state and the Indian diaspora. The spatial reclamation in these
texts, I contend, also interrogates the received notion of queer empowerment by shifting
the emphasis from visibility and inclusion to alternative agential modes such as secrecy
and camouflage. This departure from liberal Eurocentric discourses defines the essence of
my project. The main body of my dissertation consists of analysis of texts by
Anglophone, regional and diasporic Indian writers and filmmakers: Rabindranath
Tagore’s short stories (c.1890), Ismat Chughtai’s “Lihaaf” (1941), Shani Mootoo’s “Out
on Main Street” (1993), Nisha Ganatra’s Chutney Popcorn (1999), Anita Nair’s Ladies
Coupe (2001), Manju Kapur’s A Married Woman (2002), and R.Raj Rao’s The Boyfriend
(2003). I examine the different ways in which these texts represent queer space and how
they imagine an alternate cartography for the disenfranchised sexual citizens. In order to
contextualize the process of this dispossession, I examine the relationship between
colonialism, nationalism and alternative sexualities by focusing on the contemporary
historical and theoretical debates around the issues. My theoretical framework combines
two emergent discourses in contemporary academia: cultural geography and postcolonial
rethinking of the constructions of gender and sexuality. In the texts that I examine, queer
space emerges as a site of contestation with an underlying consciousness of conflicts, not
as utopian loci of disconnection with reality.
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Abstract Approved: _____________________________________
Thesis Supervisor
_____________________________________
Title and Department
_____________________________________
Date
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Thesis Supervisor
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Title and Department
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TRANSGRESSIVE TERRITORIES:
QUEER SPACE IN INDIAN FICTION AND FILM
by
Sucheta Mallick Choudhuri
A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the Doctor of
Philosophy degree in English in
the Graduate College of
The University of Iowa
December 2009
Thesis Supervisors: Professor Kevin Kopelson
Associate Professor Priya Kumar
Graduate College
The University of Iowa
Iowa City, Iowa
CERTIFICATE OF APPROVAL
_________________________
PH.D. THESIS
_______________________
This is to certify that the Ph.D. thesis of
Sucheta Mallick Choudhuri
has been approved by the Examining Committee
for the thesis requirement for the Doctor of
Philosophy degree in English at the
December 2009 graduation.
Thesis Committee: _____________________________
Kevin Kopelson, Thesis Supervisor
______________________________
Priya Kumar, Thesis Supervisor
_______________________________
Corey Creekmur
______________________________
Mary Lou Emery
_______________________________
Meena Khandelwal
______________________________
Teresa Mangum
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to express my sincere appreciation to my dissertation directors,
Kevin Kopelson and Priya Kumar, for their valuable advice, support and encouragement.
I am also very grateful to the members of my dissertation committee, Corey Creekmur,
Mary Lou Emery, Meena Khandelwal and Teresa Mangum, for their participation, help
and guidance. I would also like to thank my mother, Sipra Mallick, for all her
encouragement from halfway across the world. And finally, my heartfelt gratitude to my
husband Dilip Choudhuri, whose support and constant motivation made this project
possible.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………..1
The Accent of Postcoloniality: History, Theory and Practice……………………9
The Need for Theory………………………………………………………….…20
Spaces of Desire…………………………………………………………………25
Project Design…………………………………………………………………...31
CHAPTER
I. MASCULINITY AND SPACE IN RABINDRANATH
TAGORE’S SHORT STORIES………………………………………...40
II. THE CITY AS CLOSET: FLANERIES, JOURNEYS AND
SPACES OF OTHERNESS IN R. RAJ RAO’S
THE BOYFRIEND………………………………………………............72
Queer Urbanities: The Function of the City in Queer
Self-Definition………………...…………………………………73
“Hum Hain Rahi Pyar Ke”: Haunting the Paths of Love………..80
Pleasurable Incarceration: The Trains of Bombay………………86
“Des Autres Espaces”: Of Other Spaces and Spaces of
Otherness………………………………………………………...94
III. ALTERNATIVE CARTOGRAPHIES OF DESIRE: QUEER
UTOPIAS THROUGH THE “DIASPORIC IMAGINARY”………….102
Diasporas, Women and Queer Identity……………………...…105
Queer Utopia: An “Impossible Desire?”.....................................110
Reconfiguring Queer Utopia………………………….………..119
IV. REDEFINING AGENCY: SPACES OF QUEER DESIRE IN
“THE QUILT”, LADIES COUPE AND A MARRIED WOMAN………135
Historicizing Invisibility, Understanding Agency…………..….137
Reconfiguring Domesticty……………………………………...146
Queer Spaces: Mobility and Stasis………………………..……154
Spaces of Desire: Public and Private…………………………...161
AFTERWORD………….…………………………………………………………...…175
BIBLIOGRAPHY……………………………………………………………………...182

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