(In)visible spaces: Probing into the politics of same sex belonging in Geetanjali Shree’s The Roof Beneath Their Feet

Abstract

ABSTRACT The paper adopts a close textual analysis of the representation of same sex desire in Geetanjali Shree’s novel The Roof Beneath Their Feet (2013), originally published in Hindi as Tirohit (2007), as it tends to dismantle the domestic realm as a heteronormative space. It focuses on clandestine and parallel arrangements of togetherness forged out of love and longing formed within the heterosexual family, which imparts a sense of belonging. Using belonging as a conceptual framework, it examines how female sexual subjectivity is mediated through spatial markers of intimacy as evident through the use of sub-urban local community spaces (mohalla), secrecy, and gossip as modes of articulation. Rather than understanding families in terms of hetero/homosexual binary, it tries to locate same sex familial belonging within specific networks of power relationships such as class, gender, and community thereby outlining the shifting connotations of desire, visibility, invisibility and female sexual subjectivity. Thus, drawing from Feminist Geography and Queer theory, it demonstrates how same sex belonging, which is manifested through the “experiencing” of desire, is both performatively constituted and also influenced by the politics of intersectionality.