<i>Impossible Desires: Queer Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures</i> (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Impossible Desires: Queer Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures John Garrison (bio) Impossible Desires: Queer Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures By Gayatri Gopinath; Duke University Press, 2005 Gayatri Gopinath's Impossible Desires: Queer Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures offers important new thinking on the ways in which cultural identities are transformed and re-imagined as they manifest themselves in both globalized and transnational contexts. By focusing her analysis on queer female subjectivities that are often elided in public culture film, music, and fiction, Gopinath renders visible the logic of patriarchy that often dominates discussions of national and diasporic identities. In Gopinath's words, the volume seeks to dissect the ways in which discourses of sexuality are inextricable from prior and continuing histories of colonialism, nationalism, racing, and migration. (3) The narratives analyzed in this volume invest radically new meanings into the "familiar tropes and signifiers of Euro-American homosexuality—such as the coming-out narrative and its attendant markers of secrecy and disclosure, as well as gender inversion and cross-dressing" (13). Indeed, the process of identifying queer identities within the chosen texts (and subtexts) makes clear that they "bear little resemblance to the universalized 'gay' identity imagined within a Eurocentric gay imaginary" (1). Gopinath's critique thereby introduces new frameworks for recognizing and understanding non-normative sexual identities and relationships within globalized communities. Gopinath examines diasporic subjectivity from two perspectives: that of feminist filmmakers such as Mira Nair and Deepa Mehta, whose films imagine the home of the nation from the vantage point of the [End Page 155] diaspora, as well as that of emerging Bollywood films that conversely imagine the diaspora from the perspective of the nation. Within both these contexts, Gopinath derives meaning from the representation (and exclusion) of same-sex desire and, in doing so, introduces a wide array of new works into the canon of gay and lesbian studies. Impossible Desires joins other recent works that seek to expand notions of alterity under examination by scholars of international, queer, and feminist studies. Like David Eng's recent Racial Castration: Managing Masculinity in Asian America, which explores how public culture representation informs perceptions of Asian-American men as emasculated, homosexualized, or queer, Impossible Desires expands the field of sexuality and identity studies to understand the interplay between racism, colonialism, and homophobia in shaping representations and interpretations of both heterosexual and queer Asian identities. As a means to surface often-sublimated identities and relationships, Gopinath juxtaposes diasporic works with the national texts on which they are based. However, she resists reading these texts as translations of the originals, as this rubric would act to posit the national version of a story as the original while positioning the remake as a mimetic representation. Rather, she directly compares the two in order to yield a new view of the queerness inherent in both texts. Interestingly, Gopinath demonstrates this remaking to be a "productive activity that instantiates new regimes of sexual subjectivity even as it effaces earlier erotic arrangements" (14). That is, queer readings of diasporic texts recuperate the "desires, practices, and subjectivities rendered impossible and unimaginable" within the conventional framework in which nationalism and diaspora are discussed (11). In doing so, Gopinath's hermeneutics uniquely speaks to current academic debates around the realty effects of globalization. Rather than arguing that globalization will lead to a broad homogenization of identities and cultures, Gopinath's conclusions echo Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's notion that the emergence of transnational empires will encourage new forms of diversity. Impossible Desires also serves as a useful counterpoint to analyses of Western-based queer identity formation. For example, Didier Eribon's recent work, Insult and the Making of the Gay Self, ostensibly covers the same scholarly territory as Impossible Desires by taking as its focus the role of public discourse in shaping how queer individuals [End Page 156] perceive themselves and are perceived within their contemporary society. However, Eribon is able to effectively argue that a robust presence of anti-gay rhetoric in the public sphere not only polices gay desire but also, following Foucaultian logic, provides queer communities with forums and discourse to deploy against the regimes that seek to...