THE PERFUMED SEMEN: THE LABOUR OF LOVING IN RURAL ORISSA, INDIA

Sexuality;South Asia;Anthropology

Saria, VaibhavDas, Veena ;

Johns Hopkins University

关键词: Sexuality;    South Asia;    Anthropology;   

Others  :  https://jscholarship.library.jhu.edu/bitstream/handle/1774.2/60326/SARIA-DISSERTATION-2014.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

瑞士|英语

来源: JOHNS HOPKINS DSpace Repository

【 摘 要 】

This dissertation concerns itself with the everyday lives and love affairs of hijras of two districts, Bhadrak and Kalahandi, in the eastern state of Orissa, India. Hijras are now an easily recognizable figure of what is referenced as the ;;Third Gender’. Based on eighteen months of ethnographic fieldwork, I trace the various claims made by the social on the hijra body. I begin my study by looking at the forms of flirting that take place in the town markets between the hijras and the men of the village to critique easy readings of marginalization, exclusion, and stigmatization. I argue that the hijra, far from being at the outskirts of the social, actually reveals to us, through her offerings of sexual pedagogy, the erotic dynamics between the householder and the ascetic; the household and the world outside; or what I articulate as the texture and the dynamics of the social.I then proceed to locate the hijra within her family and map out her movement in the web of kinship. I do so in order to show that though the hijra stands apart from the rights and responsibilities of reproductive heteronormativity, her participation in various transactions of care render the domestic space salubrious and prevents disputes within kinship from becoming lethal. My research proceeds to offer evidence that complicates ideas about begging and the economic transactions hijras undertake on trains. I contrast the money hijras earn and collect with notions of daan, dakshina, dalaali, bhiksha and haq to offer a more complicated reading of the hijra as a citizen of the state waiting for its rights and dues. As a study of love affairs between hijras and their men, the dissertation offers an ethnographic elaboration that challenges the recent provocations of queer theory that focus on temporality and notions of futurity. I study love affairs not only as an instantiation of queer desire but also as an experience of time that undoes any easy association between sex and the future. I conclude by offering some thoughts of what implications my research might have on our understandings of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.