
Unruly Figures
Queerness, Sex Work, and the Politics of Sexuality in Kerala
- 288 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
Unruly Figures
Queerness, Sex Work, and the Politics of Sexuality in Kerala
About this book
The vibrant media landscape in the southern Indian state of Kerala, where kiosks overflow with magazines and colorful film posters line roadside walls, creates a sexually charged public sphere that has a long history of political protests. The 2014 "Kiss of Love" campaign garnered national attention, sparking controversy as images of activists kissing in public and dragged into police vans flooded the media. In Unruly Figures, Navaneetha Mokkil tracks the cultural practices through which sexual figures—particularly the sex worker and the lesbian—are produced in the public imagination. Her analysis includes representations of the prostitute figure in popular media, trajectories of queerness in Malayalam films, public discourse on lesbian sexuality, the autobiographical project of sex worker and activist Nalini Jameela, and the memorialization of murdered transgender activist Sweet Maria, showing how various marginalized figures stage their own fractured journeys of resistance in the post-1990s context of globalization. By bringing a substantial body of Malayalam-language literature and media texts on gender, sexuality, and social justice into conversation with current debates around sexuality studies and transnational feminism in Asian and Anglo-American academia, Mokkil reorients the debates on sexuality in India by considering the fraught trajectories of identity and rights.
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Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Series Statement
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Sexual Figures of Kerala
- 1. Tracing the Prostitute: Between Excess and Containment
- 2. To Claim the Day: The Sex Worker as Subject in the Time of AIDS
- 3. Wandering in the Vernacular: Divergent Visions of Queerness
- 4. Living Together, Dying Together: The Politics of Lesbian Hauntings
- 5. “What You Think Is Fire …”: Unspooled Movements and Suspended Readings
- Notes
- References
- Index
- Series List