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

Fourth, it is able to appreciate multiple and ambivalent meanings and embodiments of
heterosexual subjectivities and intimacies that cannot be understood through a dualism
of ‘either/or’, or ‘us/them’ or ‘West/East’, premised on exclusion and purity (Hall, 1992)
Post-colonial feminists’ concern with the intersectionality of gender, sexuality and race
(Hooks, 1981) is enriched by a Bourdieusian sociological understanding of ‘class
distinction’ (1984) analyzed also by feminists (Skeggs, 1997; Lawler, 1999). The
following section is a Bourdieusian appreciation of the sociological imperatives of ‘classculture’
on everyday lives, particularly in its relevance to the understanding of the class
distinction of the Bengali bhadrasamaj (middle-class society) and its ‘woman question’.
As I will show, this conceptualization of ‘class-culture’ is particularly pertinent to critically
appreciate urban middle-class Bengali society’s project of re-moulding or re-casting
women as a strategy against colonial power including their notion of women’s chastity,
heterosexual intimacy and patriarchal power underpinning this notion. A Bourdieusian
appreciation of class distinction will provide a theoretical anchor to Bengal’s nationalcolonial
encounters which constructed women, particularly the bhadramahila
(respectable woman, implying middle-class woman) as embodying cultural ‘authenticity’
in their specific middle-class location. This interesting gender-class dynamic
underpinning the colonial encounter that particularly affected the Bengali middleclass is,
in fact, a major reason behind taking this class as my unit of analysis. The following
section elaborates on Bourdieu’s understanding of class, culture, capital and class
distinction.
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