Raj Rao’s book is a collection of essays that straddle the personal and the political as they narrate the evolving LGBT movement in India. The book is rewarding once the reader acknowledges its genre-bending ambitions. The introduction by Thomas Waugh, who claims intimate acquaintance with the author for a ‘quarter of a century’, sets the mood for the rest of the text. Waugh establishes Raj Rao as a pioneering novelist, theoretician and activist. He also provides a caveat to the readers and notes, ‘There are occasional overlaps and repetitions, a reminder both that essays should not be read from start to finish in one sitting and that a good teacher always repeats the points to be learned in the exam’ (p. xvi). Since I did not heed his counsel and read the book from start to finish, my review may read as that befitting a truant student. Given the transgressive politics that Rao espouses in the book, I think it is rather apposite to do so.
The author in the course of nine chapters rehearses western queer theory rendering it relevant to the postcolonial Indian context. He demystifies prevalent approaches to the study of sexuality and provides the readers with a radical approach to sexual politics and desire.
In the first chapter, ‘Sex, Sexuality, Gender and Culture’, the author answers the provocative question ‘Is sexuality performative?’ For Rao, the performative aspect of sexuality applies to men more than women, and he details how this hinges on the ‘penetrative organ’. An opportunity for a rather interesting discussion on sexual perfomativity is lost since Rao unwittingly appears to conflate performativity with sexual performance. The chapter veers towards a discussion of heterosexism and homosociality (non-sexual, gender specific bonding) which the author discusses as an alibi to homosexuality. He also introduces sexual politics and its heroic flag-bearers—Foucault, Oscar Wilde, and Terry Goldie among others. His anti-essentialist, creative stance towards sexuality that he labels ‘de-stereotyping the body’ is a war-cry against any emergent form of sexual normativity, be it heteronormativity or homonormativity. Rao argues that homosexual oppression is sustained by religion, law and medicine and closes his chapter with a discussion on pink money and the consumptive gay identity.
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