Review of
The Construction of Queer Culture in India. Pioneers and Landmarks.
By Ana Garcia-Arroyo
[Barcelona: Ellas Editorial, 2006, vi + 222 pp., ISBN 84-934973-2-0]
Reviewed by
Elisa Santucci
"But what was it then that the two had in common? An observer might have said that they were both beautiful. An observer might have added that they were both desirable. But would he have noted that they liked one another?" [1]
Ana García-Arroyo arrives at this text on the construction of queer culture in India coming from her interest in aesthetics and especially literature and her conviction of their influence more than influence: power of determination on the reality, or on the truth of reality. She describes the utopian power that becomes concrete. In her text the word "utopia" has not spent all its energies yet and the hybrid process she calls culture [2] must be recognised as transitional and queer. This is the key to read the dialectical opposition that she carefully elaborates and presents between the Hindu Right [3] and the Human Rights in India.
In this context the author stresses "the political role of literature"[4], as, she writes, "let us not forget that art anticipates life."[5] Therefore the book follows a double but unique path towards "a better understanding and respect for Human Rights."[6] On the one hand we learn about people, in India, and their daily difficulties in respect to the expression of their homosexuality (which, as an expression, goes far beyond the mere homosexuality and involves a homo-culture, a homo-politics, a homo-society as human rights) [7]: "The journey of Indian men and women with alternative or queer sexualities has also been a long persistent struggle and a brave endurance in defence of their own rights, Human Rights. Moved by noble dreams and strong desires of love and human dignity, many of the protagonists in this particular journey are anonymous invisible people." [8] On the other hand, amongst the shadows and the nameless, the task of "giving voice to the voiceless" [9] falls, before it falls on anyone else, on the writers: "the production of a queer literature, of a new genre that positively represents the varied expressions of (homo)sexuality is a great achievement and certainly strengthens the roots of ´democracy´ in India if by ´democracy´ we understand the respect for Human Rights."[10]
On the assumption that politics and expression represent an identity, as the word "politics" itself guarantees, calling people in the polis, in the main square to raise their own voices, the writer (or screenplayer, or more generally every author of an aesthetic experience), who lives into words (or expressions) and makes of giving voices his business, necessarily has a privileged position and a role full of political responsibilities. The task is difficult. Ashwini Sukthankar, quoted in this volume from the end of her introduction to Facing the Mirror (1999, a collection of lesbian narratives in contemporary Indian literature written in English), describes that collection as "a tribute to writing as a record of our lives, but also a reminder that no text or script can be a substitute for the actual feat of living. We can never let ourselves forget that the story is not enough, and that there are some silences too immense for words to bridge. Perhaps sometimes, only the silence can speak our truth." [11]
The two dialectics operative in Ana García-Arroyo´s text are already displayed: Hindu Right and Human Rights; politics of the voices and rights of the silenced. In the middle of this articulation lies the space for an exemplary case amongst the Indian lesbian writers: the story and storytelling of Suniti Namjoshi. Next to her is an ancient erotic legacy in danger, in the double danger either of disappearing or of being absorbed into the general cultural mainstream.
Before entering into the real space of García-Arroyo´s work, a brief overview is due. Concerning queerness (a concept whose meaning is never exhausted even on the last pages), the author divides her text into two main sections: the first elaborates multiple ancient traditions that the Indian soil housed; the second reassumes expressive gestures (aesthetic and political) of the last two decades of the twentieth century. Between the two sections there is a "transition", in which the colonialist Indian experience is described, together with the consequent, and linked, assumption of power by the Hindu nationalism. The introduction indeed includes a relatively long quote (from Ruth Vanita and Saleem Kidwai) in which the questioning of gender operated by Buddhist and Hindu traditions is compared with the deconstruction of gender in contemporary times, [12] therefore proposing a huge leap from the present into the ancient past, over the "immutable and fossilized,"[13] "essential and static concept of Indian culture"[14] as propounded by Hindu nationalism, a nationalism originating in the colonialist times and which assumed position and method from the colonialists.
García-Arroyo underlines the liquidity of her temporal view, which shades the shadows of the rigid uniformity of Hindu Right in order to clean up a background where images of the ancient past can be reawakened in the present. Indeed a rediscovery of the multiple past, an excavation of what has remained unexcavated, [15] a forgotten legacy, is the first and most important aim - not in order to institute another power on a new mythical ground (which would unluckily be nothing new under this sky), but rather to rejoice in a transitional and queer possibility.
So must be understood the two sections of the book, divided by a few pages concerned with colonialism and the Hindu Right, two forces which have dispelled historical power into rigid demarcations of sense (not least Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code which still criminalises homosexuality). The two sections evoke each other beyond any such mythical Hindu Right, running into the utopian direction of the Human Rights. So the last two decades of the twentieth century have tried a dance with an ancient past making steps that then, after all, are more historical than utopian. The fact that Human Rights are proposed in this particular historical perspective, which dispels the continuum of mythically grounded Hindu Right, must appear not as occasional but as implied with its innermost essence. The dialectic previously mentioned between the politics of the voices and the rights of the silenced mirrors exactly the dialectic between the mythical (in the specific: Hindu) Right and the Human Rights. Again the dialectics are in the core of the concept of expression; again we meet here the exemplar case of Suniti Namjoshi.
Far from venturing myself into the wide land of references the book offers while displaying political and literary gestures of the 80s and 90s and while passing through thousands of years of ancient culture, I´d rather confine myself to a sole and most relevant example, the literary experience of Namjoshi, from which also the sense of the word "queer" can be evinced (finally setting aside standardised terminologies in order to render to each word its historical potential).
Indeed, what is at stake with Namjoshi´s works is not only the value of the word "queer" or "queer experience" but the very meaning of "queer." Already in the introduction García-Arroyo adverts, quoting Nikki Sullivan, that "queer embodies a ´verb,´ constant ´action,´ rather than a ´noun,´ an ´identity.´" [16] A few lines later she adds that "Shiva, for example, one of the trilogy of gods of Hinduism (Brahma, Shiva and Vishnu), has 1008 names. (...) From this we deduce that the necessity to use as many names, concepts and theories as possible acknowledges the fact that everything, like the symbolic image of the ´dancing Shiva,´ is in constant movement that involves shift, metamorphosis or transformation." [17] The pleasure with which the author transcribes dozens of names for the same unique and multiple concept (queer, transitional) might be referred to that. She enlists: homosexual, lesbian, samlaingikta, humjinsi, khush, bailo, homo, chadda, saheli, yaar Each word is perceived as a threat when fossilised and stigmatised, but as a source of humanity whenever instead endowed with its historical and revolutionary power. A queer awareness appears as the main destabilising ingredient to melt the clay for a new configuration in the name and make a story. The "new conception of storytelling" [18] of Namjoshi stands in between history and story.
Vikram Chandra wrote: "Don´t be afraid of what you have to tell. Tell the story." [19] There is a form of mythical foundation which says the story and makes history; there is a form of expression which listens to the story and looses history. The new practice of storytelling of Namjoshi belongs to the second type. It is revolutionary. Hoshang Merchant writes: "My task as a writer was to give tongue to the dumb ones. The beautiful boys I have loved were always too silent to tell their story. I spoke for those who couldn´t speak. I was reprimanded, always, for talking too much." [20] And Namjoshi is concerned with "anyone or anything that occupies the position of the underdog owing to injustice, displacement, alienation, isolation or otherness." [21] The beast is in the position of the underdog for antonomasia.
Namjoshi tells of beasts and their expressions. Beasts are neither human nor divine nor things and yet they are somehow all of this. "Our gods inhabit birds and beasts," "So we went to India where a stone is a god if you say it is ." [22] Beasts talk in Namjoshi´s stories. Are their talks to be incorporated into the politics of the voices? Are their voices to be aroused and brought into the polis? Are their voices to be heard over again and susceptible of registration, documentation, archiving? Is there somewhere a trace of their voices? - if not in the storytelling practice of Namjoshi
Already in the Panchatantra, "a collection of fables originally written in Sanskrit sometime between 100BC and 500AD," [23] love and friendship are expressed "though the human and divine power of speech" [24] and yet "the protagonists are animals that imitate humans in their actions and feelings." [25] Therefore, "the power of language," [26] "human and divine power," is defined though the animal vocal expression, and friendship and love are "represented symbolically in "´the seven steps taken together´ or ´the seven words spoken together.´" [27]
To the binary oppositions of heterosexuality and homosexuality, good and evil, true and false, black and white, pleasure and pain. . . .[28] and also to their own deconstructionist elaborations is counterpoised the power of language which belongs to animals and cannot be either engendered or disarticulated, can be neither spun nor deconstructed. The seven words spoken together, in their magic, do not express either identity or non-identity insofar as their meaning is only dragged along into expression, but doing so exalt the similarity between friends and the words themselves. The criteria of this similarity escape from conceptual polarities and their reversibility, and indeed what is common does not come to the surface but remains historically, tempo-rally (seven steps) enclosed in the animal language (seven words).
A great part of the oeuvre of Namjoshi is composed of stories where the protagonists are animals. Of beasts are also composed the fables in the Panchatantra. In them all animals talk. Very often such animals belong to different species, as is the case with the lion and the bullock, the crow and the tortoise, the mare and the woman, the deer and the mole. Humans are also animals. Animals´ talks happen beyond the linguistic differences, beyond the given languages of the different polis, in a communality which is not instituted in the politics of the voices but escapes from identificative/differentiative criteria, founded in a similarity-communality that happens historically in language.
´The seven steps taken together´ and ´the seven words spoken together´ clearly hint at a rhythmical or historical source which allows the development of the process of similarity and distinguishes such similarity as what is common: "that they liked one another." This liking implies a likeness: mimesis which totally differentiates itself from comparisons, confrontations, resemblances which are identificative/differentiative criteria. Such likeness happens in what is to the utmost different and far: between animals of different species, and if it happens in language, as it does, it happens not on the written-talkative but on the listening-reading-side, that means: in the historical, temporal dimension. ´The seven steps taken together´ and ´the seven words spoken together,´ though uttered, are steps-words temporally read and listened to. They may characterise the reading tempo of language, its mimetic power.
García-Arroyo refers to this love between animals of different species to exemplify the concept of queer. The distance from concepts like homosexuality, which always presupposes the love-for-the-same-as-the-self, and presupposes the same and the other, could not be clearer. So, it is talking about a mare and a woman that Namjoshi arrives at the above mentioned questions: "Eventually the woman emerged and lay down on the grass, while the mare disported herself in the river water. Whether it was the grass or the river didn´t much matter. But what was it then that the two had in common? An observer might have said that they were both beautiful. An observer might have added that they were both desirable. But would he have noted that they liked one another?" [29]
In a tradition mythically founded in the polis where the communality is legislated and legitimated, the Frage nach "what is common?" leads always to a positive Right that in India, with the Hindu Right, is still anchored in many aspects to the colonialist times. And yet another sort of tradition, the tradition of the underdog (with Benjamin: "die Tradition der Unterdrückten"), [30] can be imagined, which acknowledges the right of the silenced to be listened to, which opens up language neither in order to give voice to the silenced ones nor to silence the voices, but to give back to language its reading tempo.
A queer perspective replies to the question "what is common?" with an answer that appears accidental, extraneous, unessential at first sight: "that they liked one another." Yet the right of expression must be safeguarded much more as the "right to be listened to" than as the "right to talk." If a positive mythical Right can determine the latter, the safekeeping of the former falls into the task of the Human Rights. Therefore their task is essentially revolutionary. Therefore the imprescriptible right to be listened to implies reawakening the historical indexes in language. Therefore what is common is neither here nor there but in the queer liking-likeness which can abruptly emerge. Namjoshi writes: "(because of India you came and I return)." [31]
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NOTES
1. Suniti Namjoshi, ´By the River. For Virginia Woolf´ in Saint Suniti and the Dragon (London: Virago Press Limited, 1994), page 86.
2. Ana García-Arroyo, The Construction of Queer Culture in India. Pioneers and Landmarks (Barcelona: Ellas Editorial, 2006), page 130.
3. The term Hindu Right refers to the actual political legislative power (or Gewalt) in India. "Note 24: Hindu nationalism or Hindu Right designs not exclusively the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP or Indian People´s Party) but also its affiliates." Ibidem, page 77.
11. Ashwini Sukthankar, quoted Ibidem, page 155.
12. Ruth Vanita and Saleem Kidwai, quoted Ibidem, page 12.
15. Cfr. Giti Thadani, quoted Ibidem, page 94.
16. Nikki Sullivan, quoted Ibidem, page 12.
19. Vikram Chandra, from Red Earth and Pouring Rain (1995); quoted in Christopher Rollason, Don´t be afraid of what you have to tell: Review of: Dora Sales Salvador, Puentes sobre el mundo: Cultura, traducción y forma literaria en las narrativas de transculturación de José María Arguedas y Vikram Chandra, 2004, www.seikilos.com.ar/DoraPuentes_en.pdf
20. Hoshang Merchant, quoted in Ana García-Arroyo, The Construction of Queer Culture in India. Pioneers and Landmarks, page 138.
21. Suniti Namjoshi, quoted Ibidem, page 144.
22. Suniti Namjoshi, quoted Ibidem.
29. Suniti Namjoshi, ´By the River. For Virginia Woolf´ in Saint Suniti and the Dragon (London: Virago Press Limited, 1994), page 86.
30. Walter Benjamin, ´Über den Begriff der Geschichte' (´On the Concept of History´), VIII. Although Benjamin is quoted only here at the end of this review, there has been a plentiful recurrence of his motifs and ideas throughout the entire text. Main references: ´Critique of Violence´, ´The Task of the Translator´, ´On the Mimetic Faculty´, ´ The Storyteller. Reflections on the Works of Nikolai Leskov´, ´On the Concept of History´, in Selected Writings (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1996-2003); ´Prologue´ in The Origin of German Tragic Drama (London, New York: Verso, 1998); ´Convolute N´ in The Arcades Project (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1999).
31. Suniti Namjoshi, Because of India, quoted in Ana García-Arroyo, The Construction of Queer Culture in India. Pioneers and Landmarks, first page (unnumbered);
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