CONTENTS

Introduction: Gender and embodiment in everyday life 1

SECTION I: THE SOCIALLY CONSTRUCTED BODY: CASTE,

COMMUNITY AND NATIONALISM

Scandal in high places: Discourses on the chaste hindu women in

late nineteenth century bengal 35

Female sexuality and commuity in Jyotirmoyee Devi's Epar

Ganga Opar Ganga 74

Abducted and widowed women: Questions of sexuality and

citizenship during partition 90

SECTION II: THE LIVED BODY IN EVERYDAY LIFE: SPACE,

PERFORMANCE AND INTIMATE RELATIONSHIPS

Feminity, space and the female body: An anthropological perspective 107

Feminity and the body of female ballet dancers in the Netherlands 125

Dharma and desire freedom and destiny: Rescriptig the man woman

relationship in popular hindi cinema 145

Feminity and its discontents: Woman's body in intimate relationships 172

SECTION III: DISCIPLINING THE BODY: THE DISCOURSE

OF MEDICAL SCIENCE AND THE SOCIAL REGULATION OF PROSTITUTION

The witch in the category: A cultural approach to menstrual symptomatology 194

Prostitution: The contemporary feminist discourse 230

SECTION IV: SUBVERSIVE VOICES AND RESISTING BODIES: INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE STRATEGIES

The impossibe subject: Caste in the scene of desire 256

Feminity and sexual difference: A critical reading of Helene Cixous 271

Women and work: From housewifization to androgyny 291

Shame and control: Sexuality and power in Feminist discourse in India 313

Index 335