Summary
Contents
Subject index
“Parmesh Shahani is an original… This book will inspire and provoke many interested in understanding the intersections between sexuality, globalization, and new media.”
—Henry Jenkins, Author of Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide
“Gay Bombay is a must-read! Shifting seamlessly through the personal, the Gay Bombay community, the national, and the transnational, the book gives the reader a unique understanding of what it means to be gay and Indian.
—Jyoit Puri, Director, Graduate Program in Gender/Cultural Studies, Simons College
“…Gay Bombay is a path-breaking study of homosexuality in modern Bombay/Mumbai that will be essential reading for students of gender and sexuality.”
—Rachel Dwyer, Professor of Indian Cultures and Cinema, University of London
Using a combination of multi-sited ethnography, textual analysis, historical documentation analysis, and memoir writing, the author provides macro and micro perspectives on what it means to be a gay man located in Gay Bombay at a particular point in time. Specifically, he explores what being gay means to members of Gay Bombay and how they negotiate locality and globalization, their sense of identity as well as a feeling of community within its online/offline world. On a broader level, he critically examines the formulation and reconfiguration of contemporary Indian gayness in the light of its emergent cultural, media, and political alliances.
Key Features
Offers an exciting path breaking ethnography, which combines a large macro sweep with an intensely personal narrative. The author's memories flow in and out of the main narrative to create a distinct reading experience.; Presents a unique and timely look at urban contemporary Indian sexuality; Provides an integrated approach that illuminates how new media technologies, the media industry, audiences, and broader socio-historical contexts shape gay identity in contemporary urban India; Gives a different perspective on globalization in post-liberalization urban India, as India re-positions itself as a global superpower. How are its minorities being treated? How are they asserting themselves in this new imagination of the nation-state?; Weaves in personal experience that helps us understand male same-sex desire in relation to customary experiences in a city like Bombay
Parmesh Shahani is based in Mumbai, India, where he works on venture capital, innovation and strategic brand outreach in the corporate world and also serves as the India-based research affiliate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Convergence Culture Consortium.
Conclusion: Disco Jalebi: Observations, Concerns, Hopes
Conclusion: Disco Jalebi: Observations, Concerns, Hopes
Often truth is neither this nor that. Or rather it is a bit of both—this and that. The truth can rest on the threshold, in the twilight, somewhere in the middle, between contradictions, slipping in as a possibility between two realities….1 (Devdutt Pattnaik, 2002)
This chapter covers my analysis of how Gay Bombay came about, what being gay means to its members and how they negotiate locality and globalization, their sense of identity as well as a feeling of community within its online or offline world. My conclusion aims at a compromise between the need to make a fully knitted closure—weaving all my threads together in a giant sweep—and the realities of ambivalence and the ...
- Loading...