Dislocating West-centric feminist-queer politics from Bengal: Bhawaiya and the sexual subaltern

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dc.check.date2026-05-26
dc.contributor.authorKhandoker, Nasrinen
dc.date.accessioned2025-04-03T08:10:40Z
dc.date.available2025-04-03T08:10:40Z
dc.date.issued2024-11-26
dc.description.abstractThis article examines the political and conceptual possibilities of defiance to marriage as a gendered norm through the deviant words expressed in the lyrics of Bangla (Bengali) folk songs, in particular those in the Bhawaiya tradition. Bhawaiya is famous for its lyrics of embodied or sensual love, often in the form of deviant and “illicit” relations outside of marriage, expressed through the female voice of the songs. When performed, the songs can evoke similar deviant emotions in the performers and the listeners, creating an affective atmosphere and constructing a “temporal subjectivity” with the emotions of the female subjects of the songs, which I call the “sexual subaltern.” I argue that throughout the colonial and postcolonial nationalist reforms and the emergence of strict reproductive heteropatriarchy in Bengal, the lyrics of Bhawaiya songs remained popular under the radar and as the artifacts of deviant sexual desire of the female subjects of the songs. This article goes further in examining how the temporal and affective subjectivity of the sexual subaltern, with deviant and defiant emotions, as constructed through these songs, can offer an alternative conceptual tool to dislocate West-centric feminist-queer politics and provide a global feminist remapping.en
dc.description.statusPeer revieweden
dc.description.versionAccepted Versionen
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdfen
dc.identifier.citationKhandoker, N. (2024) ‘Dislocating West-centric feminist-queer politics from Bengal: Bhawaiya and the sexual subaltern’, International Feminist Journal of Politics, 26(5), pp. 1025–1047. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616742.2024.2420672en
dc.identifier.doi10.1080/14616742.2024.2420672en
dc.identifier.eissn1468-4470en
dc.identifier.endpage1047en
dc.identifier.issn1461-6742en
dc.identifier.issued5en
dc.identifier.journaltitleInternational Feminist Journal of Politicsen
dc.identifier.startpage1025en
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10468/17228
dc.identifier.volume26en
dc.language.isoenen
dc.publisherTaylor and Francis Ltd.en
dc.rights© 2024, Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in International Feminist Journal of Politics on [date of publication], available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/https://doi.org/10.1080/14616742.2024.2420672.en
dc.rights.urihttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/en
dc.subjectSexual subalternen
dc.subjectBhawaiya folk songsen
dc.subjectFeminist-queer allianceen
dc.subjectPostcolonial critiquesen
dc.subjectTransnational feminist politicsen
dc.subject~Sociology - Journal Articles~en
dc.titleDislocating West-centric feminist-queer politics from Bengal: Bhawaiya and the sexual subalternen
dc.typeArticle (peer-reviewed)en
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