ABSTRACT
I welcome the opportunity to have ‘a conversation’ with the other contributors to this collection that is not conducted along the binaries of the West-the Rest, the colonizer-the colonies, the powerful-the impoverished, the here-the there. It is the beginning of a conversation that happens in the unexplored spaces in between these dichotomies. In the arena of sexuality, where pleasure, desire and agency are assumed to be associated with the West, while the third world gendered and sexual subject is constructed almost exclusively through the lens of violence, victimization, impoverishment and cultural barbarism, these binaries are particularly acute. Slumdog Millionaire’s bouquet of Oscars in 2009, and similar accolades for Deepa Mehta’s film Water 1
and Zana Briski’s film Born into Brothels,2 all reinforce the idea that while India has arrived on the global political and economic scene, Indians are still largely represented as slumdogs, and Indian women as victims waiting for rescue by their global feminist sisters. I want to challenge the monochromatic lens through which the ‘Other’, in this case, the sexual ‘Other’, is viewed along such rigid boundaries.
