Being Janana
focuses on same-sex desiring male-bodied subjects in Lucknow, India, and explores how they make meaning in the marginalization of their desire through language performativity.
Along with their desire for other men,
jananas
maintain ostensibly heteronormatively and culturally defined masculine positions. This book argues for an intersectional approach to understanding
janana
life worlds and situates
subjectivity in dialogue with social, cultural, linguistic, and legal happenings. In engaging with the full complexity of
identities and experience, Ila Nagar calls for a reassessment of gender categories and a new understanding of power and sexuality amidst emerging Indian modernities.
Derived from ethnographic research conducted over a period of twelve years, this book also reflects on the interaction between social actors and researchers, and critically examines the use of ethnography as a method in sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology. It will be of interest to scholars from Anthropology, Asian Studies, Gender & Sexuality Studies, and Linguistics.