For the Record: On Sexuality and the Colonial Archive in India

Anjali Arondekar

Published by Duke University Press 2009

For the Record

On Sexuality and the Colonial Archive in India

Anjali Arondekar
Edited by: Inderpal Grewal , Caren Kaplan and Robyn Wiegman

In the series Next Wave: New Directions in Women's Studies

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822391029

Overview
Contents

About this book

A study of the colonial state's imposition of regimes of sexuality, as seen through archives of law, literature and pornography.

Author / Editor information

Anjali Arondekar is Associate Professor of Feminist Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Reviews

“For the Record is a deft, at times dazzling, archival-based critical reading of the South Asian archives. Anjali Arondekar seeks not the lost objects of sexuality, but the colonial compulsions and disciplines that conjure their appearance and disappearance across time and space. In doing so, For the Record turns sexuality studies on its head with the breathtaking elegance of a master historian and reader.”—Elizabeth A. Povinelli, author of The Empire of Love: Toward a Theory of Intimacy, Genealogy, and Carnality

“In situating sexuality at the heart of the colonial archive, Anjali Arondekar in For the Record brilliantly magnifies the dynamics of recovery and occlusion, desire and emptiness, that attend any archival project. Arondekar inquires specifically into anthropology, law, literature, and pornography in British India, not only contributing to our understanding of the ways the colonial apparatus made sex visible but also pushing forward into questions of what the postcolonial politics of that visibility might now entail. She both quotes Derrida's oblique footnote and makes it urgent: ‘The question of a politics of the archive is our permanent orientation here.’”—Carolyn Dinshaw, author of Getting Medieval: Sexualities and Communities, Pre- and Postmodern

“This engaging and inventive book is not a typical critique of the colonial archive: it depends on the colonial record even as it exposes its limits. This is a crisp and intelligent study that provides both an accounting of the traces of sexuality in colonial India and an excursus on the writing of such a history.”—Mrinalini Sinha, author of Specters of Mother India: The Global Restructuring of an Empire

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
CONTENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Preface Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Introduction. Without A Trace Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
One. A Secret Report: Richard Burton’s Colonial Anthropology Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	27
Two. Subject to Sodomy: The Case of Colonial India Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	67
Three. Archival Attachments: The Story of an India-Rubber Dildo Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	97
Four. In the Wake of 1857: Rudyard Kipling’s Mutiny Papers Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	131
Coda. Passing Returns Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	171
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	181
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	205

Language: English
Publisher: Duke University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 228

eBook

Published: September 15, 2009
ISBN: 9780822391029