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

illustrations showed that it is not possible to rigidly categorize subjects in terms of
‘modern’ generation as opposed to the ‘traditional’ generation, and subjectivities
in terms of powerful/powerful and powerless/passive. Instead, heterosexual
intimate practices must be seen as diverse and competing heterosexualities over
a monolithic, trans-historical heterosexuality. Cross-generational narratives of
coupling illustrated that cultural idealizations of heterosexual intimacy overlap
with the cultural idealizations of the family and re-inscribe the structural and
cultural inequalities of gender, generation and class that reproduce and amend
the imperatives of hetero-normativity.
d) The fourth chapter analyzed the processes of expressing heterosexual intimacy
through negotiating the bhadralok ‘distinction’ and illustrated that personal
expressions of intimacy are socially ordered, culturally learned and linguistically
mediated. By showing, how ‘personal’ ‘scripting’ of intimacy is intervened by the
intersection of gender, class and race, this chapter brought out the mutual coconstitution
of personal and political, self and society, subjectivity and discourse.
The chapter showed how nineteenth century colonial constructions of gender and
class respectability were still intertwined with contemporary hegemonic codes of
bhadralok ‘distinction’. It illustrated bhadrasamaj’s vested interest in upholding
bhadra and ruchishonmoto ‘script’ of intimacy and brought out subjects’ everyday
inter-subjective negotiation, confirmation, circumvention and subversion of these
hegemonic codes of classed and gendered intimacy. It also showed that in these
processes of negotiation, hegemony is a contested terrain within a rather
fragmented, heterogenous middle-class that is continually struggling to
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