Clearing through some backlog from the last few months when I wasn’t posting anything… back in June my article ‘Indian Feminist Publishing and the Sexual Subaltern’ was published in Rupkatha, an open-access academic journal of interdisciplinary humanities. The full article can be downloaded here, but here’s the abstract:
‘The discussion of queer politics, identities and “sexual subalterns” in India has, after 2009,entered a new phase. Discourse on sexuality was once largely focused on law and health policies; now, such discourse is better able to address positive identities and their multitude of
articulations. The relationship between queer and feminist discourse has become more
productive. This article examines independent feminist publishers as a representative of Indian
feminist discourse on sexuality and sexual subalternity. Such publishers are significant mediators of feminist scholarship and discourse, so analysing their work can reveal much about
‘mainstream’ forms of feminism. The December 2013 Supreme Court judgment to uphold Section 377 is concerning to many, but in the four and a half years that homosexuality was effectively legal in India, the visibility of the sexual subaltern broadened to the extent that it may be difficult to return to a pre-2009 state.’
