ABSTRACT
In postcolonial India, the subject of sex and desire play out in a multitude of cultural spaces: in celluloid fantasy; ‘radio mirchi’ (chilli) chartbuster numbers; and erotic dance sequences both on screen in the cinema halls and off screen in the cacophony of Indian weddings. Women do dance in the postcolonial world, though this image is largely absent from the imagination and scholarship of the international women’s rights movement. It is at one level hardly surprising given the representations of the third world subject – in particular, the female subject – that dominate news items in the Western hemisphere and the developed world. Indeed, that look of starvation, helplessness and victimisation is remarkably familiar to our imaginations, irrespective of the reality.
