Gopinath writes about post 9/11 in the US and the rise of Bollywood type cinema. She discusses how the increase in surveillance of South Asian communities coincides with the rise of Bollywood, which she calls a “representational excess and material violence” (Gopinath, 157). This representational form perpetuates the disappearance of queer female subjectivities, maintaining heterosexualization of female characters and generating commodities of consumption of South Asian culture and South Asians. All the while South Asian men are being detained and questioned and labeled terrorist. It is interesting to consider how both these forms act together as a type of hyper-surveillance, policing bodies and behaviors.  Reading this article reminded me of a discussion in another class from last week. We were talking about how the increase in movies and shows that portray a slave narrative in the US coincides with the rise and rapid expansion of the PIC. Obviously there are huge differences between these two comparisons from Gopinath and my other class. But a similarity is how certain (sometimes historicized) subjectivities are being produced that incur sympathy, empathy, or maybe even humor while another politicized identity is being produced and reproduced in the US- that of the terrorist or the criminal, who is subsequently denied any such response from the public. Are those parallelisms functioning as a form of US nationalism? Gopinath goes on to look at some films that have reproduced certain heteronormative US nationalist narratives depicting South Asian characters. She then discusses Parminder Sekhon’s photography and how she works to bring visibility to queer female desire and subjectivity. Puar’s article looked at the torture and the depictions and discourse surrounding the torture of the prisoners of Abu Ghraib. Specifically she calls to question why was ‘disgusting’ was used over and over when describing these images and events when photos of body parts and bomb damage doesn’t cause similar reactions. The depictions of gay sex acts in these photos of torture by American soldiers causes major anxiety over calling into question the US as an authority of morality and ethics.

I liked reading the piece by Kapadia about MIA and queer cartographies. The idea of queer cartographies is very productive in the way it can allow consideration of other ways to be in the world, a reclamation of historical tropes and the rethinking of possibilities when looking through the opacity of globalized economy. The chapter in Hip Hop Desis was something I had read several quarters ago in another class. Something to note is that D’Lo is a trans comedian/actor now and was very recently in a Cheryl Dunye film. That chapter discusses gendered stereotypes and misogyny within hip hop communities. She discusses how these gendered stereotypes get mapped on to bodies differently, and that these unequal gendered relations can be worked out within and across race lines. And that ultimately they should be because hip hop has been a source of empowerment and space of politicization for many (Sharma, 189). I think something similar is happening in Mira Nair’s Mississippi Masala, so much anxiety is generated from both Demetrius and Meena’s families and communities over their relationship.

I really appreciated all of the readings and videos from this week. Dark Matter’s poetry and performance is extremely moving. Alok is on instagram and facebook and I highly recommend following them if you are also on those platforms. In Trans/Generation, addressing why they don’t smile in family photos as a form of resistance, the silence and violence inherited from men, and the rage that their grandmother puts into her painting- as gender for short, narrates all the ways in which the gender binary enacted onto society creates so many different forms of violence and oppression. In When Brown looks in the Mirror…calling out the english language, a language for hurting, reminded me of our discussion in class of Cereus and what it meant when Mala stopped speaking english. I had seen LaWhore Vagistan’s video #SarinotSorry before and really appreciated reading this interview. LaWhore Vagistan talks about how she worked toward her drag persona and performance. She also discusses the role of the auntie in various ways and how that cultural support and knowledge comes from many different places and travels in many different ways. She also talks about the slippage between her drag persona and no drag persona. And how Vagistan represents the rupture and separation between India and Pakistan and the affects this had on her family. Roy’s short story addressed his experience being gay in the midwest and how white supremacy informs the exotifying and fethishism that he experiences within white gay culture. I really loved the poems by Leah Lakshmi Piepza-Samarasinha and how she discusses queer culture and diaspora living in the bay area. Also what it is like living with mcs among other chronic illnesses that limits the way in which she and others can interact in a space. My city is a hard femme was my favorite poem, completely unapologetic femmedom and how that is related to a city space.

Chandra Mohanty’s Under Western Eyes is an immensely important touchstone piece that everyone in academia should read. I remember reading it in my first feminist studies course and I’m so glad I get to reread it again in my final quarter here. Mohanty is disrupting and problematizing the notion that western scholarship is ahistorical and apolitical. And that western feminists working within that framework are only reproducing white supremacist structures. She looks at 5 instances where white western feminists wrote about women of the global south reinforcing and framing the monolith of all third world women being victims. It takes on a paternalistic tone that is extremely problematic, among other things. Moving forward she emphasizes how important context is when considering any situation and to also resist the universal idea of the third world women and global sisterhood.

Richa Nagar’s piece on Communal Discourses was very interesting and I would like to use some of the ideas presented in this article in my research paper. Although I am still unsure what exactly I want to work on for that project. Nagar also emphasized context in the beginning of the paper- that one cannot fully understand certain processes of colonialism and racial hierarchy without considering the gendered processes that also informed the communities. Nagar carefully traced these shifting contexts through time and space and how social reproduction and communal discourses informed marriage and migration patterns between South Asia and North Africa. I found the double bind placed on South Asian wives- the expectation of sexual purity to the point of them being denied any sexuality. That type of denial and repression made me think of Deepa Mehta’s Fire and the relationship that formed between Sita and Radha. I was wondering, while reading Nagar’s piece, if any queer relationships formed cross caste, cross class, cross racially and if any record of this exists today.

Shani Mootoo’s novel Cereus Blooms at Night was beautiful and tragic. The author explored different formations of kinship (between Mala and Tyler, Otoh, Ambrose and Mala, etc) and expressions of sexuality, that have been repressed through forces of heteropatriarchy and shame. Each one having a moment of bravery or self acceptance- either it be Otah or Tyler, even Lavinia and Sarah. Near the end of the novel Tyler accepts who they may be and express themselves in a more public way, after experiencing acceptance from Mala and Otty. Sarah and Lavinia’s relationship is much more tormented, and after deciding to run away together, and being forced to leave both Mala and Asha- I wondered how they recovered/if they recovered? I also wondered if perhaps they had a relationship when they were younger, before Lavinia went to the Wetlands. I guess with them being fictional characters I can fill in the blanks as the reader.The author also explored upsetting topics of incest and sexual assault. Which was hard to read and lead to Mala’s mental break and subsequent dissociations. Love is ambivalent and tormenting.

I connect this novel with the second reading by Niranjana through the ways in which life on the island of Latanacamara is subtlety described and the parallels of what Niranjana describes of the West Indies. In both the novel and chapter it seems for indentured laborers the only access to a sense of modernity and/or progress was through an education grounded in Christianity and western assimilation. It is more subtle in the novel but in both readings there is a description of how a space is changed by the influx of indentured laborers. How racial, class, and gender dynamics begin to shift.

Niranjana also goes on to describe how indentured labor and the efforts to end it did circulate around the morality of the Indian woman. There was an increased anxiety over the ‘wrong type of Indian woman’ being sent to the West Indies for work and how their flippant nature lead to increased gender violence and wife killings. The westerners observing this rise in violence spoke on it as if gendered violence doesn’t occur in the West. As if this gendered violence is a result of culture and tradition of the East.