QUEER SPACE: A STUDY OF SELECT SOUTH ASIAN NARRATIVES

Abstract

Foucauldian concepts of power, knowledge, and discourse and Derridian deconstruction have provided new insights to look into one’s subjectivity or identity. Queer theory adopts basically the deconstructive insights to queer the boundaries and binaries such as masculine/feminine, heterosexual/homosexual among others. Sara Ahmed conceptualizes the same as done by Judith Butler and Michel Foucault that our sexuality and gender are social constructs not biological or natural but with phenomenological twist. Why phenomenology to understand queer? Sara Ahmed took the clue or set of tools from phenomenology that consciousness is intentional meaning it is directional towards objects and sets out to answer how we are oriented when our body leaks to the world. She says: Phenomenology can offer a resource for queer studies in sofar as it emphasizes the importance of lived experience, the intentionality of consciousness, the significance of nearness or what is ready-to-hand, and the role of repeated and habitual actions in shaping bodies and worlds. (2) Orientations, says Sara Ahmed, are affected by ‘proximity’ and ‘familiarity’. Proximity means nearness, what is reachable. One will be oriented towards who or what is at hand and familiar. Our society is heterosexual so it gives the background of heterosexuality to coming generation for action. Our family, culture, education are all reservoirs of heterosexuality from which a child is familiar. “Familiarity is what is, as it were, given, and which is being given “gives” the body the capacity to be oriented in this way or in that. The question of orientation becomes, then, a question not only about how we “find” our way “but how we come to “feel at home” (7). Sara Ahmed adds further that “a queer phenomenology, perhaps, might start by redirecting our attention toward different objects, those that are “less proximate” or even those that deviate or are deviant” (3). The present research is demarcated in three apartments as gay, lesbian and transgender writers.This research aims at examining queer narratives in English from South Asia. Queer narratives from South Asia have been selected to explore the unconventional gender and sexual orientation.Through a close texual reading of the selected narratives by Shyam Selvadurai, Hanif Kureishi, Suniti Namjoshi, Ismat Chughtai, A. Revathi and Laxmi Narayan ii Tripathi, this research analyzes the thematic content and the portrayals of characters to find out queer representation of gender and sexuality. Myths, lore and legends are the reservoir of the collective unconscious of the people. Hindu philosophy believes in fluid identity and plurality. In Hindu narratives gender metamorphosis and sexual transformation are common and masculinity of any patriarch in women's apparel is never questioned or threatened rather god’s androgyny is the matter of veneration. Hindus revere Shiva in the form of Ardhanareeswara, the half woman god. Indians are familiar with gods who transformed into nymphs, as Vishnu often descended from his heavenly abode Vaikunth in the form of Mohini to set the things right on the Earth, or into animals like Narasimha who incarnates in the form of half lion and half human to demolish evil Hiranyakashipu and restore Dharma. We are not surprised by the stories where a king becomes pregnant and two queens together make love and conceive a child. We are familiar with male goddesses and female gods.