[Reader-list] research proposal

[Abhay Dube]

Here is a proposal idea for independent research. Your
comments, suggestions are welcome.

‘New’ City: ‘New’ Sexuality

This research proposal is based on the assumption that
a ‘new’ city can be traced through the reconstruction
of its ‘new sexuality. It has two obvious ingredients:
metropolis of Delhi as a concrete entity and its
changing representation in terms of sexuality as a
complex social experience. I propose to see Delhi and
sexuality and there interaction in following terms:
Delhi: A mega city of politics, movements, business,
law and order, consumerism, eateries, entertainment,
immigrants, office goers, beauty and body culture,
crowds, elites and subalterns. It has changed beyond
recognition through geographical and demographic
expansion in last twenty-five years. Earlier
representations of Delhi’s sexuality were limited to
the very few suggestive ad-campaigns, symbolic love
scenes of mainstream Hindi cinema, truncated kissing
and sex acts of foreign movies usually exhibited in
posh localities, poorly printed underground porn with
the notable exception of one or two ‘respected’ girly
magazines, ad-bills depicting the potency enhancing
properties of sex drugs pasted appropriately in public
toilets, and related discussion confined to the few
liberated types. But today’s Delhi brooks no such
limits. With enlargement of public domain and under
the influence of globalised modernity every aforesaid
trait has become unlimited and sexuality has become a
thing of everydayness.

A ‘new’ city has already been come into being, whose
boundaries are populated with a different and far more
erotic representation of self, where eroticism can be
seen as more dispersed, where romantic love gets open
sexual expressions, and human relations get redefined
not only by general socio-economic factors but also
through the power of desire. Constantly expanding
margins of this city can be seen as carrying its
sexuality into the cities of future.

Sexuality: This conceptual construct of late modernity
is basically related to the individual identity which
includes one’s entire being including one’s
perceptions, sense of self, relationships, sexual
practices, fantasies, concepts of love, romance and
pleasure. It is also about fears, vulnerability and
confusion. To use this concept as a tool to map the
‘new’ city can easily run into trouble because city’s
individuality might prove far more complex than the
sexuality of a single human being. But history of this
concept provides few openings and shows its intrinsic
relationship with the city.

In early twentieth century Europe literary and other
intellectual discourses managed to pierce through the
Victorian taboos and tried to discover a ‘new’ city
through the prism of sex. The partial success of this
project resulted in a concept of sexuality which,
although heavily overlaid by erotica and sex, went
beyond the medical or psychological representations of
mere sexual behaviour patterns. Imbricated with
various knowledges, different representations of the
self, varied attitude of elite and masses towards sex,
morality, reproduction, law, crime, repression and
liberation, sexuality became a potential arena where a
‘new’ city can be seen emerging from the pre-existing
one. Immigrant or native, both found in  himself or
herself a subject of this complex social experience.

Obviously, city’s sexuality is too vast a project to
be covered under this modest proposal. To be begin
with, I choose to identify following areas:
1. Conversation with sexologists, properly trained and
with some experience in clinical practice as well as
with tantriks and other quacks.
2. Changing pattern of printed porn and a glance at
increasing middle class participation in sex related
trade.
3. Collecting the data through sex surveys already
done by various NGOs and other institutions.
4. A representative survey of related creative
literature generated in last twenty-five years.
5. Creating a profile of Delhi’s sexuality through the
movement of its sexual minorities.

ABHAY KUMAR DUBEY




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