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Criminal Love?
Queer Theory, Culture, and Politics in India
First Edition
- R. Raj Rao - Head, Department of English, Savitribai Phule Pune University, India
March 2018 | 200 pages | SAGE Publications Pvt. Ltd
Criminal Love? takes up the challenge of studying the wide gamut of lived reality of the Indian queer, against the backdrop of a set of theories. Written by a man who has been openly gay for the last 40 years, this book picks up issues, concepts, and theories within the realm of queer studies and dissects them against the day-to-day experiences of Indian queers. Digging deep into his own experiences and those of the people with whom he has come into contact, Rao highlights the sites of transgression within a seemingly monosexual society and analyzes all the aspects of the struggle of being queer in a repressive atmosphere.
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction by Thomas Waugh
I: Sex, Sexuality, Gender, and Culture
II: Identities
III: Normativities
IV: Homosociality
V: Homophobia
VI: Lesbianism
VII: Perversion
VIII: Historiography
IX: The Politics of Section 377, IPC
Bibliography
Index
“India’s first and only gay theorist worth reading.”
Poet and Former Professor, University of Hyderabad, India
“A courageous book that does not shy away from contested territory and will challenge our ideas of what it might mean to be ‘queer’.”
Professor, University of Tübingen, Germany
“In a piece written in the time before the recent decriminalisation of article 377, Rao brings out fearless and often controversial opinions of his to the fore which have come to gather both praise and controversy… Reading through it left me with questions that had never occurred to me before, which is always a plus.”