Unveiling Desire : Fallen Women in Literature, Culture, and Films of the East / edited by Devaleena Das and Colette Morrow ; foreword by Nawal El-Saadawi.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Das, Devaleena, 1983- editor.

Morrow, Colette, editor.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Women--Sexual behavior--Orient.

Women.

Symbolism--Orient.

Symbolism.

Femmes fatale--Orient.

Femmes fatale.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New Brunswick, NJ : Rutgers University Press, [2018]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

In Unveiling Desire, Devaleena Das and Colette Morrow show that the duality of the fallen/saved woman is as prevalent in Eastern culture as it is in the West, specifically in literature and films. Using examples from the Middle to Far East, including Iran, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Thailand, Japan, and China, this anthology challenges the fascination with Eastern women as passive, abject, or sexually exotic, but also resists the temptation to then focus on the veil, geisha, sati, or Muslim women's oppression without exploring Eastern women's sexuality beyond these contexts. The chapters cover instead mind/body sexual politics, patriarchal cultural constructs, the anatomy of sex and power in relation to myth and culture, denigration of female anatomy, and gender performativity. From Persepolis to Bollywood, and from fairy tales to crime fiction, the contributors to Unveiling Desire show how the struggle for women's liberation is truly global.

Contents:

Frontmatter

CONTENTS

Foreword / El-Saadawi, Nawal

Introduction / Das, Devaleena / Morrow, Colette

Part I: Chastity, Fidelity, and Women's Cross-Cultural Encounters

1. Feminist Neoimperialism in Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis / Morrow, Colette

2. The Forgotten Women of 1971: Bangladesh's Failure to Remember Rape Victims of the Liberation War / Azim, Firdous

3. Fragmented State, Fragmented Women: Reading Gender, Reading History in Partition Fiction / Halder, Paramita

4. The Trope of the "Fallen Women" in the Fiction of Bangladeshi Women Writers / Khan, Hafiza Nilofar

Part II: Forbidden Desires and Misogynist Enculturation

5. Polyamorous Draupadi: Adharma or Emancipation? / Das, Devaleena

6. Damaged Goods! Managed Gods! Indian Cinema's Virtuous Hierarchies / Gangar, Amrit

7. Roop Taraashi: Sex, Culture, Violence, Impersonation, and the Politics of the Inner Sanctum / Dey, Naina

Part III: Political Economy and Questioning Tradition in the Far East

8. More Than Just an Exchange of Fluids: Southeast Asian Prostitutes and the Western Sexual Economy / Betty, Louis

9. Representing Bad Women in Wu Zetian Si Da Qi'An: Political Criticism in Late Qing Crime Fiction / Benedetti, Lavinia

10. The Problematic Maternal in Moto Hagio's Graphic Fiction: An Analysis of "Iguana Girl" / Kuribayashi, Tomoko

Part IV: Unchaste Goddesses and Transgressive Women in a Turbulent Nation

11. A Dark Goddess for a Fallen World: Mapping Apocalypse in Some of Bankim Chandra Chatterjee's Novels / Malhotra, Meenakshi

12. Desire and Dharma: A Study of the Representation of Fallen Women in the Novels of Bankim Chandra / Biswas, Chandrani

13. The Fallen Woman in Bengali Literature: Binodini Dasi and Tagore's Chokher Bali / Chakravarty, Radha

Part V: The Moral Frontiers of Lesbianism in the East

14. Shaking the Throne of God: Muslim Women Writers Who Dared / Jussawalla, Feroza

15. Homoeroticism and Reaccessing the Idea of "Fallen Woman" in Keval Sood's Murgikhana / Sharma Chanana, Kuhu

Afterword / Das, Devaleena / Morrow, Colette

Contributors

Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 21. Dez 2019)

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780813587875

0813587875

9780813587868

0813587867

OCLC:

1007505291