Sexuality Reimagined

The books argues that a self-based on sexual subjectivity is possible. The project, based on rich empirical evidence, explores, investigates, and examines the question of how a sexual subject becomes a political subject and gets implicated in the rationality of state processes and policies. The problem, as stated above, when addressed, helps the reader to understand the formation of sexual subjectivity in South Asia. The construction of sexual subjectivity is a complex and dynamic process, understood through ethnographic work on the life world of MSM, men who have sex with men. Exploration of this dynamism helps to understand the social and cultural process of how masculinities are formed and performed in the everyday lives of people who do not conform to the heterosexual agenda. The unearthing of social, cultural, and political processes of construction of masculinity essentially disrupts the public and private binary which has been the classic liberal distinction to understand the processual notion of self and selfhood in the South Asian context. The book is accompanied by illustrations from the field to make the reader understand the lifeworld of MSM, a medical category imposed by the Indian state.