Powerful cultural productions: Identity politics in diasporic same-sex South Asian weddings

Abstract

Queer diasporic subjects are multiply displaced and often excluded from familial, local, national, and transnational spheres. This ethnographic study examines five same-sex South Asian American Hindu wedding ceremonies to demonstrate that these events are spaces where power and one’s inclusion into the dominant social structure are negotiated. The ritualized performances and social interactions surrounding these ceremonies serve to enact, articulate and transform culture. The ceremonies enable the actors to claim ownership of tradition, and insert their subjectivities into one of its most fundamental institutions. While the structures of power operate most visibly on macro-political levels, they are often replicated, resisted, and subverted in numerous intimate arenas of lived experience, such as wedding ceremonies.