Speaking of the Self: Gender, Performance, and Autobiography in South Asia

Description

Many consider the autobiography to be a Western genre that represents the self as fully autonomous. The contributors to Speaking of the Self challenge this presumption by examining a wide range of women's autobiographical writing from South Asia. Expanding the definition of what kinds of writing can be considered autobiographical, the contributors analyze everything from poetry, songs, mystical experiences, and diaries to prose, fiction, architecture, and religious treatises. The authors they study are just as diverse: a Mughal princess, an eighteenth-century courtesan from Hyderabad, a nineteenth-century Muslim prostitute in Punjab, a housewife in colonial Bengal, a Muslim Gandhian devotee of Krishna, several female Indian and Pakistani novelists, and two male actors who worked as female impersonators. The contributors find that in these autobiographies the authors construct their gendered selves in relational terms. Throughout, they show how autobiographical writing—in whatever form it takes—provides the means toward more fully understanding the historical, social, and cultural milieu in which the author performs herself and creates her subjectivity. Contributors: Asiya Alam, Afshan Bokhari, Uma Chakravarti, Kathryn Hansen, Siobhan Lambert-Hurley, Anshu Malhotra, Ritu Menon, Shubhra Ray, Shweta Sachdeva Jha, Sylvia Vatuk Cover......Page 1 Contents......Page 8 Acknowledgments......Page 10 Introduction: Gender, Performance, and Autobiography in South Asia / Anshu Malhotra and Siobhan Lambert-Hurley......Page 12 Part I. Negotiating Autobiography: Between Assertion and Subversion......Page 42 1. A Passion for Reading: The Role of Early Twentieth-Century Urdu Novels in the Construction of an Individual Female Identity in 1930s Hyderabad / Sylvia Vatuk......Page 44 2. Pentimento: The Self beneath the Surface / Ritu Menon......Page 67 3. Interrupted Stories: The Self-Narratives of Nazr Sajjad Hyder / Asiya Alam......Page 83 4. Kailashbashini Debi’s Janaika Grihabadhur Diary: A Woman “Constructing” Her “Self” in Nineteenth-Century Bengal? / Shubhra Ray......Page 106 Part II. Forms and Modes of Self-Fashioning......Page 130 5. Betrayal, Anger, and Loss: Women Write the Partition in Pakistan / Uma Chakravarti......Page 132 6. Tawa’if as Poet and Patron: Rethinking Women’s Self-Representation / Shweta Sachdeva Jha......Page 152 7. Masculine Modes of Female Subjectivity: The Case of Jahanara Begam / Afshan Bokhari......Page 176 Part III. Destabilizing the Normative: The Heterogeneous Self......Page 214 8. Performing a Persona: Reading Piro’s Kafis / Anshu Malhotra......Page 216 9. The Heart of a Gopi: Raihana Tyabji’s Bhakti Devotionalism as Self-Representation / Siobhan Lambert-Hurley......Page 241 10. Performing Gender and Faith: In Indian Theater Autobiographies / Kathryn Hansen......Page 266 Select Bibliography......Page 292 Contributors......Page 312 A......Page 316 C......Page 317 H......Page 318 M......Page 319 R......Page 320 S......Page 321 V......Page 322 Z......Page 323