narratives of three generations of urban middle-class - eTheses ...

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What is education of any use if we cannot be modern enough to question patriarchal religious prescriptions that oppress women?’ I told my ‘partner straight away that forget about my wearing those shakha shnidur’, I will only get married if we just have a ‘court marriage’ and a simple ‘engagement ring exchange ceremony’ rather than go through all that meaningless ‘high caste brahmanical Hindu ritual marriage’. ‘Although my in-laws are pretty traditional and conservative and I knew they would not easily accept just a legal marriage, I told my partner that if he ‘cared’ for me then he will have to ‘convince’ his parents.” Sunanda’s resistance to ‘meaningless’ high-caste hindu ritual marriage and to bearing of marital signs attempts to make a ‘reflexive’ political language of resistance to hegemonic codes of gender and its associated ‘patriarchal’ ideologies of casteism and communalism. Her refusal to undergo ritual marriage and perform only a court marriage and a simple ring ceremony however, cannot be read as an absolute resistance to patriarchal power structure. In resisting a patriarchal religious discourse, she complies with another patriarchal legal discourse of legitimate institutionalized marriage. The Westernized ritual of ring ceremony popularly known as the ‘engagement’ ceremony and adapted within the Bengali bhadrasamaj illustrates local adaptations of hegemonic codes of trans-national intimacy and its hetero-normative romantic coupling (Puri, 1999). Sunanda’s ‘modern’, ‘educated’, ‘cultured’, ‘progressive’, ‘reflexive’ and ‘feminist’ self is contrasted with the ‘shadharon’ and ‘oppressed’ other. These invocations of self identity in relation to her intimate space politicize certain hierarchical value judgment that distinguishes the self from the other. Sunanda’s directly narrativized and implied binary can be seen to be an influence of hegemonic Western modernity and feminism 255
(Mohanty, 1991). A direct and also a logical derivation of the binary are thus understood from her self-narrative in the table below: SELF Modern Progressive Feminist Liberated Secular Reflexive Cultured Educated OTHER Non-modern/traditional/conservative Non-progressive/backward Non-feminist/anti-feminist/patriarchal Oppressed Religious Non-reflexive Uncultured Uneducated What Sunanda’s educated, modern, progressive, self-reflexive feminism fails to critically interrogate is her conformity to a trans-national hegemonic discourse of heteronormative intimacy and a monolithic feminism that stereotypes and homogenizes identity, experience and practices and also legitimizes superiority of the self over inferiority of the other. In this section I have shown the multiplicity of the processes of meaning-making, and representation (Hall, 1997a) with regards to practices of intimacy. Within a certain historical time and cultural space therefore, there is always a range of meanings and interpretations ‘floating about’ with regards to any given socio-cultural phenomenon. Negotiating intimate practices and their meanings simultaneously confirms, 256
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PROCESSES OF NEGOTIATING INTIMATE H
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT For their convictio
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ABSTRACT Through interview generate
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Bhadrasamaj- Respectable society im
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Saundarya- Emotional internal beaut
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The ‘Liberating’ Narrative/Disc
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Summary of Analyses: ..............
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negotiate and deal with these issue
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) Academic Contextualization Within
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practices of intimacy and analyze a
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that were at the heart of both foun
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also be explored in relation to mas
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In this context my research seeks t
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Appreciating Western academic schol
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only manifests itself in the public
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to love one another” (Beck and Be
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This double standard sexual reputat
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In this context of appreciating het
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‘woman’ as a collective politic
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satisfaction giving meaning to life
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This brings us back to the apprecia
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embedded in culture and history and
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same relation (Paul and Spencer, 20
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gender friendships reported (Allan,
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therefore never totally comprehensi
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understands this erotic as a ‘sha
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empirical study of friendship patte
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Hence, Banerjee argues that a conte
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In this contextual appreciation and
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and they have to be interpreted by
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postmodern turn. It links the micro
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1989). From a post-colonial feminis
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Bourdieusian Analysis of Class-Cult
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the individual” Contrarily he aff
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caste and class (Lakha, 1999: 265).
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home or the inner sphere (Chatterje
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of Bankim’s reading of the image
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ecognize the structural imperatives
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Western inspired romantic model of
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clue to the relational structure of
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Seymour, 1999). Cultural identity a
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) How do subjects negotiate, that i
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narrative and linguistic turns take
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The Ethnographic: Most commonly eth
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ealism is based on the view that th
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and ‘cultural narratives’ (Laum
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of, “then in our times”, I thou
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commitment is practised in and thro
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empirical methodology to a communic
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Third Generation Second Generation
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hadrasamaj’s constuction of Rabin
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simplistically read as a story of g
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Bengal. The distinctiveness of Beng
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2002: 124). An in-depth narrative q
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Since there is no one ‘correct’
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assured my interviewees a certain r
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eactions, for this may have been a
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Method of Analysis: The method of a
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and personal life that are understo
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Deconstructive discourse analysis i
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‘interactionist turn’, a post-s
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valorization of ‘brotherhood’.
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men continually seek for communal a
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Ronjon links adda to nostalgic imag
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eproducing the cultural imperatives
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extended and elevated bench-like co
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comfortable, secure and familiar ha
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extent, socially structured by one
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practices but are, in fact, shaped
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as Sundordi (adjective sundor means
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otherhood in male homosocial intima
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This narrative illustrates trans-na
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suggests the cross-cultural relianc
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Similar narratives across all gener
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perform family-like rituals and tra
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It is significant to note that stor
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“Precisely because I detest the s
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“Other things may change such as
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latant and visible (Seidler, 1989).
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homosocial bonding and loyalty is,
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‘innocuous’ ragging and informa
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male power; modern homosexual intim
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Through various cultural practices,
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knowledge and practice is an ongoin
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The topics discussed may have also
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on to an associated binary politics
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conditioned by sedimented structure
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friend with whom I can share these
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Situating ‘Woman’ and ‘Homo
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homogenous male self and space is u
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waste of time’ and moreover I don
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materialistic, public ‘work’ an
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afford this subversion of hetero-no
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The Generational Re-production of F
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and reproduce institutionalized het
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through a woman’s prioritization
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ief each other about how we are goi
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Dalia is highly disdainful of putti
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only practice a reflexive narrative
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possibility of such subversive homo
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not think of myself as just a house
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of the para) and provide cultural e
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women, the people of the para have
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successfully become so dominating a
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smell of the fragrance Natasha wear
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exaggerating gendered commonalities
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CHAPTER-6 NARRATIVES OF COUPLING: N
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often invoked to strategically circ
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Page 261 and 262: 1999; Gross, 2005; Smart, 2007; Hea
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Page 267: Photo-6: Illustrates the homosocial
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Page 293 and 294: Through narrating over and over sto
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Page 301 and 302: ‘Intimate’ English Language: Tr
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Page 305 and 306: CHAPTER-8 CONCLUSION Through interv
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Page 311 and 312: Research Contribution: Theoretical
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dialoguing with existing scholarshi
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) Self-Other Reaffirmation and Cult
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various power dynamics involved in
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Chakraborty (ed.) Jounota o Shonksh
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Chakraborty, D., 2000. Provincializ
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Finch, J. (2007) Displaying familie
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Grossberg, L. (1993) “The Formati
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Jackson, S. (1996) “Heterosexuali
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Lawler, S. (1999) ‘Getting out an
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Morgan, D. (1996) Family Connection
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Robinson, V. (1993) “Heterosexual
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Somers, M.R. (1994) The Narrative C
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APPENDIX Table-1: Brief Biography o
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Table-2: Brief Biography of Female
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