Impossible Desires: Queer Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures(Perverse Modernities: a Series Edited by Jack Halberstam and Lisa Lowe)

About the Book

A major intervention in queer, postcolonial, and cultural studies, Impossible Subjects rethinks the concept of diaspora through examinations of a range of South Asian diasporic literature, film, and music. Focusing on queer female diasporic subjectivity, Gaytri Gopinath develops a concept of diaspora apart from the logic of blood, authenticity, and patrilineal descent that she argues invariably forms the core of conventional formulations. She explains how the framework of a queer diaspora recuperates those desires, practices, and subjectivities that are rendered unimaginable within the dominant diasporic and nationalist imaginaries. A consideration of queerness becomes a way to challenge nationalist ideologies by restoring what has been rendered illegible or impossible: the impure, inauthentic, and non-reproductive. It suggests alternative ways of conceptualizing community and collectivity across disparate geographic locations, ways based in politics rather than blood or nostalgia for the homeland and times past.Gopinath juxtaposes diverse texts to indicate the range of oppositional practices, subjectivities, and visions of collectivity that fall outside mainstream narratives of colonialism, nationalism, liberal feminism, and gay and lesbian politics and theory. She considers British Asian music of the 1990s alongside alternative media and cultural practices. She examines literature including V. S. Naipaul's classic novel A House for Mr. Biswas, Ismat Chugtai's short story "The Quilt," Monica Ali's Brick Lane, Shyam Selvadurai Funny Face, and Shani Mootoo's Cereus Blooms at Night. Analyzing films including Deepa Mehta's controversial Fire and Mira Nair's Monsoon Wedding, she pays particular attention to how South Asian diasporic feminist filmmakers have reworked Bollywood's strategies of queer representation. Gopinath's readings are dazzling, and her insights and theoretical framework transformative and far-reaching.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments ix
1. Impossible Desires: An Introduction 1
2. Communities of Sound: Queering South Asian Popular Music in the Diaspora 29
3. Surviving Naipaul: Housing Masculinity in A House for Mr. Biswas, Surviving Sabu, and East Is East 63
4. Bollywood/Hollywood: Queer Cinematic Representation and the Perils of Translation 93
5. Local Sites/Global Contexts: The Transnational Trajectories of Fire and "The Quilt" 131
6. Nostalgia, Desire, and Diaspora: Funny Boy and Cereus Blooms at Night 161
7. Epilogue: Queer Homes in Diaspora 187
Notes 195
Bibliography 221
Filmography 235
Index 237

About the Author :

Gayatri Gopinath is Assistant Professor of Women and Gender Studies at the University of California, Davis.

Review :
"[Gayatri's] lively accessible writing ranges from British-Asian music, through Bollywood/Hollywood to the work of Pakistani writer Ishmat Chugtai. Her analysis of films including Fire and Monsoon Wedding is a particular highlight."--DIVA, October 2005 "Gayatri Gopinath's innovative book marks a new stage in queer and diasporic studies. Incisive, expansive, and nuanced, Gopinath's analysis will surely be invoked by academics in the future. A landmark piece of scholarship!"--Martin F. Manalansan IV, author of Global Divas: Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora "Boldly spanning Hindi film, British Asian music, Urdu literature, diasporic postcolonial literature and film, U.S. queer activism, and feminist politics, Gayatri Gopinath argues that queer desire becomes central to the ways in which national and diasporic histories are told when the erotics of power is acknowledged. Impossible Subjects is a deft demonstration of both queer theory's dominant ethnocentrism and diaspora and postcolonial studies' heteronormativity and androcentrism."--Ranjana Khanna, author of Dark Continents: Psychoanalysis and Colonialism "Gopinath's lively, accessible writing ranges from British-Asian music, through Bollywood/Hollywood to the work of Pakistani writer Ishmat Chugtai. Her analysis of films including Fire and Monsoon Wedding is a particular highlight." --Diva Magazine "Impossible Desires is a fascinating and lively book that is lucidly written. It can be used equally well with committed undergraduate students as well as by more advanced scholarly readers to engage further with the queer female diasporic subject and the possibilities that she suggests."-- Rajinder Dudrah, GLQ "By bringing queer theory to bear on ideas of diaspora, Gayatri Gopinath produces both a more compelling queer theory and a more nuanced understanding of diaspora... Gopinath's readings are dazzling, and her theoretical framework transformative and far-reaching."--Indologica blog "This smart and well-written book signals a sea change in the field... Impossible Desires stands as a pathbreaking work, addressing persistent exclusions in both feminist and queer literatures on South Asian public culture and significantly reworking current conceptualizations of diaspora."-- Lawrence Cohen, Journal of Asian Studies