Confronting the Body: The Politics of Physicality in Colonial and Post-colonial IndiaJames H. Mills, Satadru Sen The human body in modern South Asia is a continuous political enterprise. The body was central to the project of British colonialism, as well as to the Indian response to colonial rule. By constructing British bodies as normative and disciplined, and Indian bodies as deviant and undisciplined, the British could construct an ideology of their own fitness for political power and defence of colonialism itself. The politics of physicality then manifested in reverse in many ways, not least through Gandhi's use of his body as public experiment in discipline, as well as becoming a living rejection of British rule and norms of physicality. In the post-colonial period, the politics of physicality became more public. Bodies and their symbolic meanings were deployed not only against the European 'other' but, increasingly, against other Indian bodies - be it the representation of political aspiration, beauty pageants and the representation of nationalism on the world stage, the furtherance of feminist issues or the moral issues of sexual images of women in the media. In this challenging and wide-ranging new collection, the editors have assembled some of the best new writing on physicality in modern India. Providing a balance of materials from colonial and post-colonial India, Confronting the Body includes new research by established and up-and-coming writers in the social sciences and humanities. |
Contents
PostColonial India Joseph S Alter | 16 |
A Parcel of Dummies? Sport and the Body in Indian | 39 |
The Student Body | 58 |
Psychiatric Regimes | 80 |
Caste Religion and Prisons | 102 |
Colonial Art Education and the Figure | 6 |
of the Native Craftsman Deepali Dewan 118 | 118 |
The Body and Identity Politics | 135 |
The Writing of Sex and Gender | 146 |
Representations of | 162 |
Other editions - View all
Confronting the Body: The Politics of Physicality in Colonial and Post ... James H. Mills Limited preview - 2004 |
Common terms and phrases
Annadurai argued art education art schools Asian asylum behaviour Bengal Bharatiya Kushti birth control Bombay British Calcutta caste colonial India CONFRONTING THE BODY constructed context cricket cultural Delhi Dimeo disciplinary discipline discipline and punishment discourse Dravidian elite embodied English female feminist focus football Foucault gender Hindu Ibid identity ideology images Indian arts Indian body inmates institutions issue jail kalarippayattu Kallakudi Karunanidhi Kushti labour Lagaan London LOTAH EMEUTES Lunatic Madras magazines male marriage masculinity means medical officers middle-class modern Mohun Bagan moral Muslims nationalism nationalist native craftsman nineteenth century Oxford University Press P S Venkata P S Venkata Subba patient Phadke physical Pillay political post-colonial practice prisoners production punishment Punjab Rajkumar College reform representations rhetoric Sananda sexual social society South Asia sport superintendent Tamil tion TMH Letter traditional Tyndale-Biscoe Venkata Subba Rao Western woman women wrestlers wrestling Yog Manjari yoga