ABSTRACT
In discussing the construct of masculinities across time and across space, all the essays together map the uneven landscape of multiple masculinities and multiple intersections of domination and subordination. They offer a nuanced account of masculinities as an open field of contestation in which a number of norms converge – or fail to converge – in an ongoing way as these norms themselves are made and remade in fields of power. Some of the contributions foreground questions that are generated in specific local contexts, while others engage with globalization and transnationalism and their effects on localized as well as migrant sensibilities. All of the essays explore the conditions that make possible certain male performances in specific temporalities and assess the effects of such performances on local and global identities. They trace the diverse (and frequently contested) ways of embodying masculinity during the colonial, the nationalist, and the post-Independence eras, in addition to analysing myriad figurations of South Asian masculinities in diasporic contexts. The analyses of some of the critical historical events that shaped (and continue to shape) South Asian men and masculinities alert us to the threat of, and the challenges to, dominant discourses of gender, sexuality, religion, and nation. I hope that these mappings will prove insightful and informative to a wide range of readers and interlocutors and encourage further investigation of men and masculinities in diverse spaces with both shared and divergent histories.
