Social Identity Essay

CCT END-TERM

ABSTARCT-

Any serious study of sexuality/ sexualities and the politics perpetually at play in determining the complex diverse connotations of these terms must necessarily start with a consideration of notions of identity and identity formation, sexual or otherwise.

I think the questions of identity per se are themselves very complex to begin with, they become all the more complex when one has to relate the questions of sexual identities or preferences with questions of national specificity. This attempt is further complicated when it coincides with the emerging discourses of nationhood and nationality which views nation in a process of making and unmaking and critique the constructed notion of nationhood itself.

Cultural studies

This forms the basis of Sandip Roy’s essay- “Double minorities- The Experience of the Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender Indians in the Diaspora”. He calls them a double minority owing to the fact that in the foreign land they are an ethnic minority as well as queer which makes them doubly displaced. Contemporary South Asian sexual identities can be said are created out of multiplicitous effects and perceptions of tradition, modernity, colonialization and globalization. Sexuality today is at once personal and private and also the most public and political issues that engages us both intellectually and practically. Keeping all this in mind this essay specifically talks about the south Asian gay population and their invisibility to the outside world. The south Asian population sis said to comprise of the people from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Tibet and Bhutan. He makes it very clear in the first paragraph itself that the essay is solely dealing with the concerns of the south Asian gay men and woman in the diaspora. It dwells on homosexuality as an experience. This is what cultural studies I believe is doing on the queer front, it works with the representative identities that the queers have invariably created which conforms them to a certain set of stereotypes, there is a constant battle

One should know that firstly coming out is not necessary for every homosexual individual. It is the need for recognition in society, which drives such a coming out. If any individual is comfortable being hidden and avoiding unnecessary problems it’s totally his/her call. But one should also note that coming out is just not confined within a dialogue between you and your loved ones or the society, coming out can be in any way. People have their unique ways of coming out, some could write, some could paint, art itself can be a very suitable medium through which one could come out. I can only think of one such filmmaker who I have in mind and that is Rituparno Ghosh. Ghosh I believe has exemplified that activism can be achieved through art. If one closely sees this auteur figure one would definitely acknowledge its two sides, one where he is considered as the torch bearer of the Bengali art cinema and on the other hand a non normative director with impulses of transgression, who poses serious questions to the society, and raises questions about sex, gender and identity. Middle class sensibilities that his films try to articulate are juxtaposed with his ideas of sex and identity. Sexuality and the process of becoming and presenting himself as queer, and becoming an iconic figure for the LGBT community, though he was never an activist per