This essay intends to 'read' the 105 page text of the Naz foundation judgement as a site for the ... more This essay intends to 'read' the 105 page text of the Naz foundation judgement as a site for the de-historicisation of 'homosexual' subject(s). Employing Roland Barthes' explication of 'myth', an attempt is made to understand how the text of the judgement constructs the myth of heterosexuality which de-naturalises the 'homosexual' subject as a naturally occurring 'unnatural' phenomenon. This essay probes into the contradictory ways in which the 'homosexual' subject is produced by the text. While on one hand the 'homosexual' is understood as a 'class', on the other, a radical anti-essentialist stance is exhibited in the evocation of the discourse of AIDS and particularly the category of MSM (men who have sex with men). The simultaneous 'minoritising' and 'universalising' stances present in the judgement produce the queer subject in confounding ways which inadvertently evoke and reinforce the specter of the closet. The essay also provides a critique of the 'right to privacy' in so far as it threatens to erase the queer subject from the public, thereby, re-producing the closet. The metaphor of the closet is used to denote a space (or its lack) which functions to cohere heterosexuality and produce the 'homosexual' as its inevitable and often invisible other. By attempting to analyse the relationship between the queer Indian subject and the closet as produced by the text of the judgement, a theory of the closet is envisaged as not simply a feature of queer lives but all lives in general in a heteronormative context.
This essay intends to 'read' the 105 page text of the Naz foundation judgement as a site for the ... more This essay intends to 'read' the 105 page text of the Naz foundation judgement as a site for the de-historicisation of 'homosexual' subject(s). Employing Roland Barthes' explication of 'myth', an attempt is made to understand how the text of the judgement constructs the myth of heterosexuality which de-naturalises the 'homosexual' subject as a naturally occurring 'unnatural' phenomenon. This essay probes into the contradictory ways in which the 'homosexual' subject is produced by the text. While on one hand the 'homosexual' is understood as a 'class', on the other, a radical anti-essentialist stance is exhibited in the evocation of the discourse of AIDS and particularly the category of MSM (men who have sex with men). The simultaneous 'minoritising' and 'universalising' stances present in the judgement produce the queer subject in confounding ways which inadvertently evoke and reinforce the specter of the closet. The essay also provides a critique of the 'right to privacy' in so far as it threatens to erase the queer subject from the public, thereby, re-producing the closet. The metaphor of the closet is used to denote a space (or its lack) which functions to cohere heterosexuality and produce the 'homosexual' as its inevitable and often invisible other. By attempting to analyse the relationship between the queer Indian subject and the closet as produced by the text of the judgement, a theory of the closet is envisaged as not simply a feature of queer lives but all lives in general in a heteronormative context.
Uploads
Papers by Zaid A Baset