Speaking of the Self: Gender, Performance, and Autobiography in South Asia ed. by Anshu Malhotra and Siobhan Lambert-Hurley

Abstract

Reviewed by: Speaking of the Self: Gender, Performance, and Autobiography in South Asia ed. by Anshu Malhotra and Siobhan Lambert-Hurley Monika Browarczyk (bio) Anshu Malhotra and Siobhan Lambert-Hurley, editors. Speaking of the Self: Gender, Performance, and Autobiography in South Asia. Duke UP, 2015. 312 pp. ISBN 978-0822359913, $26.95. Speaking of the Self takes up the ambitious task of rewriting the practice of auto-biography research on South Asia. The point of departure for the ten studies making up the book lies at the intersection of gender and performance, two key theoretical concepts that serve as the backbone of the project. It is not surprising, therefore, that the question of how these concepts both shape women's autobiographical narratives in South Asia and impact their study emerges again and again in all the essays that make up this collection, setting up a coherent and interactive dialogue that engages readers interested in autobiography, women, gender, literature, or regional studies. Each chapter focuses on a different author (or cohort of authors)—predominantly women, but also two male actors playing women on stage or, as the author calls them, female impersonators (255)—and their autobiographical narratives. Besides narratives that could be termed "classical" within the Western tradition of life writing (for example, texts that are written down and subsequently published), we also encounter life narratives that are transmitted orally, composed in verses, constructed in stones, or given the form of different literary genres, which span centuries of practice of self-representation in India and ultimately challenge the canon of life writing. Not only is the range of autobiographers discussed in this volume diverse, as are the regions represented and the time periods covered, but the forms of autobiographical narratives those autobiographers employ are also varied, making this collection a treat to review. The editors, Anshu Malhotra and Siobhan Lambert-Hurley, succeed in presenting research on South Asia that plots in a broad time frame self-expressions that can be placed both inside and outside the genre of "classical" autobiography. The interdisciplinary character of the book is brought into sharp relief, on one hand, by the range of contributors—a couple of historians, an anthropologist, a feminist writer and publisher, and representatives of literary studies (working with Bengali, Urdu, Punjabi, Persian, and English)—and, on the other hand, by the amazing range of authors they investigate: a Mughal princess from the seventeenth century, the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century courtesans from princely states, a Bengali housewife diarist of the first half of the nineteenth century, women novelists, male actors performing women's roles; and a twentieth-century nationalist. As the offspring of an academic research network titled Women's Autobiography in Islamic Society, the collection is unsurprisingly inclined toward Muslim authors.1 Intriguingly, some of them profess ambiguous religious [End Page 371] affiliations, thus providing an opening for reflections on the performative aspect of religion itself. By contrast, just three of the auto-narratives examined in the volume have been authored by Hindus. However, the research project on women's autobiographies in Islamic societies, which seems to have played an important role in shaping the book, is mentioned only in the acknowledgments and is conspicuously absent from the otherwise well-balanced introduction, where the rationale for the selective representation of authors studied in Speaking of the Self could have been discussed at greater length. The matter is addressed only in passing, with the editors declaring, The list, however, is naturally selective. In part, it reflects the contributor's own research interest, but as this is a book that focuses primarily (but not entirely) on the written life, these subjects are, in turn, limited by the requirement of literacy, a marker that remained woefully low in South Asia until very recently and, indeed, still does in certain sectors. (2) Be that as it may, the editorial choice of the material may inadvertently create an overall impression, especially among uninformed readers, that the majority of women's autobiographical narratives in South Asia have been authored by women who are Muslim. The methodologically and academically grounded introduction sketches an outline of life writing's history in South Asia; stipulates details of research on autobiography in...