Passionate Modernity: Sexuality, Class, and Consumption in India

by Srivastava; Sanjay

• ISBN13: 9780415424158
• ISBN10: 0415424151
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-04-17
• Publisher: Routledge India

Summary

Combining historical and ethnographic analysis, this book deals with the making of the heterosexual imagination from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present in the Indian context. This unique book uses methods from anthropology, cultural studies and history to explore the making of modern cultures of sexuality in India. It provides an analysis of the sexual and domestic politics of the period by focusing on the vast corpus of publications and journals on sexology from the 1920s to the 1940s, and links Indian activities with those in other parts of the world. The author analyzes material that has thus far been outside the purview of scholarly studies, namely, ?footpath pornography?, magazines such as Sexology Mirror (in Hindi), women?s magazines dealing explicitly with sex and sexuality.

Table of Contents

Introduction : sexual Swarajya, debased Muslims and uncontrollable tribals : subcontinental sex-questions	p. 1
Instruction for utopia : 'sane sex living', eugenics and the making of a transnational modernity in early twentieth-century India	p. 39
The idea of Lata Mangeshkar : Hindu sexuality, the girl-child, and heterosexual desire in the time of the five year plans	p. 79
The masculinity of dis-location : commodities, the metropolis and the sex-clinics of Delhi and Mumbai	p. 116
Pedestrian desires : footpath pornography and the aesthetics of fluid spaces	p. 167
Threshold and surplus subjectivities : Sexology Darpan makes meanings in Hari Nagar	p. 203
Among the veg. tacos and baby pizzas, Shekhar and Monica make silent, unsatisfactory love : domesticating sexuality	p. 236
'A rainbow of wishes': Tupperware, female sexuality, home, and the world	p. 280
Conclusion : complicating 'sexuality'	p. 328
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