Dissertation
Messy trans and queer storytelling: (un)doing Indian exceptionalism
University of Iowa
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), University of Iowa
Spring 2025
DOI: 10.25820/etd.007932
Abstract
In my dissertation, “Messy Trans and Queer Storytelling: (Un)Doing Indian Exceptionalism,” I show how specific Indian trans and queer narratives and performances across different platforms reflect messy affiliations with liberal and anti-caste ideologies. I attend to messiness as an optic that explains alliances between disparate groups as well as incongruencies in identity formations. I also approach messiness as a practice that can complicate the “subjectless critique” in queer studies and trans studies and recognize how subjects take up or resist identity markers. I propose that these allied fields must attend to the understanding of region as a messy coming together of desire and politics. The word, “mess” implies dirt that can be associated with the logic of purity and pollution upheld by the caste system. The theory of messiness enables collaborative practices even as it shows how liberal upper caste storytellers become flagbearers of an exceptionally inclusive India. Paying attention to messiness as a practice of storytelling can help counter stories that center majoritarianism in LGBT activism. Simultaneously, since messiness depends on identity affiliations, it can help scholars in queer theory and trans theory be more open to embracing identity politics that check the brutalization of religious, ethnic and gender minorities.
Emphasizing interdisciplinarity, I explore such identity affiliations through my analysis of print anthologies, Bollywood films, and documentation of grassroots activism and performance. Through close reading, discourse analysis, podcast interviews, and autoethnography, I engage with the works of contemporary writers, filmmakers, and activists from an anti-caste queer standpoint. I see this standpoint as a mode of relationality that resists a reparative reading of Hindu queer archives.
My dissertation is divided into four chapters, each focusing on a different genre and mode of queer and trans expression. In Chapter One, “Editorial Practices: Archival, Nationalism and Care Work,” I explore how LGBT anthologies are constituted at the intersection of political and economic liberalism, caste hegemony and national belonging. I consider contrasting strategies used by editors like Ruth Vanita, Saleem Kidwai, Ashwini Sukthankar, and A. Revathi to solicit and collate queer and trans stories. In Chapter Two, “The Hindu Family on OTT Platforms,” I extend the conversation on representation by paying attention to how streaming platforms produce films like Maja Ma and Geeli Puchi that reveal contradictory investments in Hindu lesbian desire. The third chapter, “‘Jai Hijra, Jai Jai Hijra’- Self-Respect and Performance during 2015 Telangana Swabhimana Yatra” draws attention to how working-class trans and hijra activists use performance and culture to make a case for dignity that departs from both right-wing and anti-caste opposition to sex work. My final chapter, “Experiencing Joy, Resistance and Care in West Bengal” sheds light on the trans-kothi world-making, made possible by grassroots activists as hosts within and beyond academic spaces.
I conclude my dissertation by showing the limitations of messiness as an optic (for the researcher) or as a practice (by the storyteller). I argue that though attending to messiness offers clarity in how stories get crafted and circulated, it does not promise radical action.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Messy trans and queer storytelling: (un)doing Indian exceptionalism
- Creators
- Rajorshi Das
- Contributors
- Elizabeth Rodriguez Fielder (Advisor)Aniruddha Dutta (Committee Member)Claire Fox (Committee Member)Deborah Whaley (Committee Member)Sandeep Bakshi (Committee Member)
- Resource Type
- Dissertation
- Degree Awarded
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), University of Iowa
- Degree in
- English
- Date degree season
- Spring 2025
- DOI
- 10.25820/etd.007932
- Publisher
- University of Iowa
- Number of pages
- xii, 238 pages
- Copyright
- Copyright 2025 Rajorshi Das
- Language
- English
- Date submitted
- 04/16/2025
- Description illustrations
- Illustrations
- Description bibliographic
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 187-238).
- Public Abstract (ETD)
Storytelling as a practice of art is messy because it is shaped by various identity markers. Embracing this messiness reveals how queer and trans stories are shaped and circulated in contemporary India. I show caste, class, occupation, language, and region shape storytelling, across narratives and performances. Attending to such identity markers explains how certain stories contribute to or depart from the idea of India as an inclusive nation-state. It reveals how coalitions are formed even when storytellers or their allies may come from disparate ideological backgrounds. This does not mean that messiness will always lead to radical action. Rather, it helps in understanding the creation and circulation of stories and their afterlives.
- Academic Unit
- English
- Record Identifier
- 9984831124702771
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