Beyond emasculation : pleasure and power in the making of hijra in Bangladesh / Adnan Hossain.

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2021.

1 online resource (236 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Access is available to the Yale community.

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 06 Aug 2021).

Access restricted by licensing agreement.

This book is based on long term ethnographic research with hijras, the emblematic figure of South Asian sexual and gender difference in Dhaka, Bangladesh. It proposes the hijra as a counter-cultural formation that embodies not only a direct contrast to hegemonic patterns of masculinity but also as an alternative subculture offering the possibility of varied forms of erotic pleasures and practices otherwise forbidden in mainstream society. While most studies view hijras as an asexual, emasculated, third sex/gender, this book calls into question the phallocentric logic that obscures alternative sites and sources of bodily power and pleasure, emphasizing how hijras craft their own subject position. Ethnographically rich and theoretically engaged, this book will cause a new, global re-examination of both hijras in particular and the wider range of 'male femininities' in general.

Cambridge core frontlist 2021.

Print version:

Books / Online

English

September 15, 2021