Too Hot to Handle

The Cultural Politics of Fire

Dados Bibliográficos

ID3945496
AutoresRatna Kapur (0000-0001-7867-4038, autor correspondente)
Ano2000
Volume64
Fascículo1
Páginas53-64
Data de publicação2000-04-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoFeminist Review (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0141-7789 • E-ISSN: 1466-4380
EditoraSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1080/014177800338963
OpenAlexW2058577662
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas18
Referências citadas3

This essay explores the ways in which the definition of Indian culture has become a site of contest, and how this contest played out in the controversy that erupted over the release and screening of Deepa Mehta's diasporic film, Fire, in India. I locate this controversy within the broader controversies that are taking place over culture, particularly when issues of sex and sexuality are involved. The continuous targeting of representations of sex and sexuality, betrays an underlying fear that sex is something that is threatening to Indian cultural values, to the Indian way of life, to the very existence of the Indian nation. I discuss the responses to the release of the film by the forces of the Hindu Right as well as feminist and lesbian groups and critique the uncomplicated understandings of culture that informed these positions. Contingent upon these responses rests the story in Fire and the way in which the lesbian subject, a sexual subaltern, is constructed in the cultural space represented in the film. I challenge the positions that suggest that the women are represented as victims in the film, and draw attention to the cultural, sexual and familial ruptures brought about by the main protagonists through their desire for one another. I explore the complicated understandings of agency and desire that are represented through the assertion of this relationship

Aesthetics · Agency (philosophy) · CONTEST · Hinduism · Human sexuality · Lesbian · Political science · Politics · Social science · Sociology · Subaltern · Subject (documents) · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology · Cultural Studies · Gender Studies · Law · Philosophy · Religious studies · South Asian Cinema and Culture · South Asian Studies and Conflicts