Unruly Figures: Queerness, Sex Work, and the Politics of Sexuality in Kerala

by Navaneetha Mokkil, Piya Chatterjee (Series Editor)

The vibrant media landscape in the southern Indian state of Kerala, where kiosks overflow with magazines and colorful film posters line roadside walls, creates a sexually charged public sphere that has a long history of political protests. The 2014 "Kiss of Love" campaign garnered national attention, sparking controversy as images of activists kissing in public and dragged into police vans flooded the media. In Unruly Figures, Navaneetha Mokkil tracks the cultural practices through which sexual figures―particularly the sex worker and the lesbian―are produced in the public imagination. Her analysis includes representations of the prostitute figure in popular media, trajectories of queerness in Malayalam films, public discourse on lesbian sexuality, the autobiographical project of sex worker and activist Nalini Jameela, and the memorialization of murdered transgender activist Sweet Maria, showing how various marginalized figures stage their own fractured journeys of resistance in the post-1990s context of globalization.

By bringing a substantial body of Malayalam-language literature and media texts on gender, sexuality, and social justice into conversation with current debates around sexuality studies and transnational feminism in Asian and Anglo-American academia, Mokkil reorients the debates on sexuality in India by considering the fraught trajectories of identity and rights.

Genres: LGBT, India

288 pages, Hardcover

Published May 2, 2019

Reviews

[Jasun Chelat · Rating 5 out of 5]

honestly little annoyed that i stayed up two nights to finish an academic book. what a nerd lol

it was great though 10/10

[Ayyorama · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s a comprehensive treatise and important commentary on sexuality politics and its blurry lines tread by sex workers and lesbians in Kerala. It questions national and international narratives on LGBT rights, human rights and feminist frameworks in the backdrop of unruly figurations of sex workers and lesbians in media cinema other forms of expression in Kerala. My first academic work in several years. It was a challenge to read as seamlessly as other books. I persisted and it was worth it.

[daniel dillon · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was a bit let down by this book. Mokkil spends so much time at the beginning telling the reader everything that it will do, that I was left disappointed when the content chapters didn't do all the things. Still a decent book, and does important work boosting the signal for work that is otherwise only accessible to speakers/readers of Malayalam.