Impossible Desires: Queer Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures (Perverse Modernities: A Series Edited by Jack Halberstam and Lisa Lowe)

By bringing queer theory to bear on ideas of diaspora, Gayatri Gopinath produces both a more compelling queer theory and a more nuanced understanding of diaspora. Focusing on queer female diasporic subjectivity, Gopinath develops a theory of diaspora apart from the logic of blood, authenticity, and patrilineal descent that she argues invariably forms the core of conventional formulations. She examines South Asian diasporic literature, film, and music in order to suggest alternative ways of conceptualizing community and collectivity across disparate geographic locations. Her agile readings challenge nationalist ideologies by bringing to light that which has been rendered illegible or impossible within diaspora: the impure, inauthentic, and nonreproductive. Gopinath juxtaposes diverse texts to indicate the range of oppositional practices, subjectivities, and visions of collectivity that fall outside not only mainstream narratives of diaspora, colonialism, and nationalism but also most projects of liberal feminism and gay and lesbian politics and theory. She considers British Asian music of the 1990s alongside alternative media and cultural practices. Among the fictional works she discusses are V. S. Naipaul’s classic novel A House for Mr. Biswas, Ismat Chughtai’s short story “The Quilt,” Monica Ali’s Brick Lane, Shyam Selvadurai’s Funny Boy, and Shani Mootoo’s Cereus Blooms at Night. Analyzing films including Deepa Mehta’s controversial Fire and Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding, she pays particular attention to how South Asian diasporic feminist filmmakers have reworked Bollywood’s strategies of queer representation and to what is lost or gained in this process of translation. Gopinath’s readings are dazzling, and her theoretical framework transformative and far-reaching. Impossible Desires : An Introduction -- Communities Of Sound : Queering South Asian Popular Music In The Diaspora -- Surviving Naipaul : Housing Masculinity In A House For Mr. Biswas, Surviving Sabu, And East Is East -- Bollywood/hollywood : Queer Cinematic Representation And The Perils Of Translation -- Local Sites/global Contexts : The Transnational Trajectories Of Fire And The Quilt -- Nostalgia, Desire, Diaspora : Funny Boy And Cereus Blooms At Night -- Epilogue: Queer Homes In Diaspora. Gayatri Gopinath. Includes Bibliographical References (p. [221]-233), Filmography (p. [235]-236) And Index. Acknowledgments ix 1. Impossible Desires: An Introduction 1 2. Communities of Sound: Queering South Asian Popular Music in the Diaspora 29 3. Surviving Naipaul: Housing Masculinity in A House for Mr. Biswas, Surviving Sabu, and East Is East 63 4. Bollywood/Hollywood: Queer Cinematic Representation and the Perils of Translation 93 5. Local Sites/Global Contexts: The Transnational Trajectories of Fire and "The Quilt" 131 6. Nostalgia, Desire, and Diaspora: Funny Boy and Cereus Blooms at Night 161 7. Epilogue: Queer Homes in Diaspora 187 Notes 195 Bibliography 221 Filmography 235 Index 237 Argues for the uses of queer, feminist transnational theory in order to understanding South Asian and South Asian diasporic identities and cultural production