The Sexual Life of English

Chandra, Shefali:
The Sexual Life of English : caste and desire in modern India / Shefali Chandra. - Durham : Duke University Press, 2012. - ca. 296 S. - (Next Wave: New Directions in Women's Studies)
ISBN 978-0-8223-5260-0 (Hardcover)
US$ 89,95
ISBN 978-0-8223-5227-3 (Paperback)
US$ 24,95
DDC: 420.954
-- Angekündigt für April 2012 --

Beschreibung
In The Sexual Life of English, Shefali Chandra examines how English became an Indian language. She rejects the idea that English was fully formed prior to its life in India, or that it was imposed from without. Rather, by drawing attention to sexuality and power, Chandra argues that the English language was produced through conflicts over caste, religion, and class. Sentiments and experiences of desire, respectability, conjugality, status, consumption, and fashion came together to direct the Indian history of English. The language was shaped by the sexual experiences of Indians and by native attempts to discipline the normative sexual subject. Focusing on the years between 1850 and 1930, she scrutinizes the English-education project as Indians gained the power to direct it themselves. She delves into the history of schools, the composition of the student bodies, and disagreements about curricula; the way that English-educated subjects wrote about English; and debates in English and Marathi popular culture. Chandra shows how concerns over linguistic change were popularly voiced in a sexual idiom, how English and the vernacular were separated through the vocabulary of sexual difference, and how the demand for matrimony naturalized the social location of the English language. [Verlagsinformation]

Inhalt
Note on Transliteration and Spelling. vii
Part One
1. Learning Gender, Knowing English: An Introduction. 3
2. "The Prudent and Cautious Engrafting of English Upon Our Female Population": Pedagogy and Performance. 29
3. The Language of the Bedroom: Mimicry, Masculinity, and the Sexual Power of English. 57
4. "A New Generation of Hipless and Breastless Women . . . To the Forefront in Europe and America": Literature, Social Class, and the Wider World of English. 83
Part Two
5. "I Shall Read Pretty English Stories to My Mother and Translate Them into Marathi for Her": Widowhood, Virtue, and the Secularization of Caste. 117
6. "Why Had I Ever Begun to Learn English?": Desire, Labor, and the Transregional Orientation of Caste. 137
7. Dosebai Jessawalla and the "March of Advancement in the Face of Obloquy". 157
8. Epilogue: "I Am an Indian. I Have No Language": Parvatibai Athavale and the Limits to English. 175
Salaams. 191
Notes. 195
Bibliography. 245
Index. 267

Autorin
SHEFALI CHANDRA is Assistant Professor in the Department of History, the International and Area Studies Program, and the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program at Washington University, St. Louis. Profile page.

Quellen: Duke University Press; WorldCat; Google Books; Amazon