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Indian Journal of Gender Studies
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Bodies Gone Awry

The Abjection of Sexuality in Development Discourse in Contemporary Kerala

J Devika

J. Devika is Associate Professor, Centre for Development Studies, Prasant Nagar Road, Medical College PO, Thiruvananthapuram 695 011, Kerala. E-mail: devika{at}cds.ac.in.

The article attempts to probe the silence of mainstream development discourse on sexuality and reproductive and sexual rights. This seems to go against the fact that there is now greater admission in development literature on Kerala that gender imbalances in a number of crucial indices do mar the state's claims of high levels of human development. This question is approached through an examination of the ways in which developmentalism has inflected both public discourse and academic knowledge in Kerala, and their interpenetration. Historically, sexuality has been marginalised in Kerala and projected onto prostitute-bodies; in the 1990s, the fear of ‘unbounded’ sexuality had been a prominent feature of public discourse. The sexualisation of deprived groups to strip them of moral claims to welfare indicates the heightening of abjection as a major mode of social exclusion. The abjection of sexuality in contemporary Malayalee public discourse and the silence about women's sexual and reproductive rights in contemporary development discourse do not appear unconnected. The current situation seems to call for creative dialogue between feminist and counter-heteronormative politics, which would resist protectionism and heterosexism.

Indian Journal of Gender Studies, Vol. 16, No. 1, 21-46 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/097152150801600102
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