‘Libidinal Nationalism’: The Political Economy of Gender Transgression in India

Abstract

This essay is a speculative analysis on corporeality and embodiment that is envisaged in the light of bodily representation and image of gender liminal bodies in the non-West –further focusing on the complex dynamics of re-imagining beauty and aesthetics of the contemporary hijra identities in India. Taking this standpoint forward I attempt to highlight newer discourses of embodiment and enactment as installing a gendered essence to (re)frame the possibilities and negotiation of the body and sexuality in the non-West. With special emphasis to body studies, the essay strongly carves the materiality and bodily aesthetics that further conjure to rearticulate body with nationalistic sentiments as espoused to refer to the rhetoric of the libidinal and erotic enterprise of the hijra body. This allows to advocate the perspective of the body and the sexual economy wherein breasts (hijras in Bombay) and bunda (buttocks: of the travesty in Brazil) conveys a powerful key symbol echoing the corporeal ideal as indicators to the ‘national preference’ of the region. The popularity of breasts and bunda thus idealized as feminine corporeal aesthetics that the hijras and travesties contours their body through silicone implant surgery, injectable silicone. The cosmetic practices thus site the implication to view the massive unveiling of desire and desirability within the growing gender liminal culture in the developing societies as to relate to the national ideologies of beauty and eroticism.