Digital Queer Cultures in India

Sexuality in India offers an expression of nationalist anxieties and is a significant marker of modernity through which subjectivities are formed among the middle class. This book investigates the everyday experience of queer Indian men on digital spaces. It explores how queer identities are formed in virtual spaces and how the existence of such spaces challenge and critique 'Indian'-ness. It also looks at the role of class and intimacy within the discourse. This work argues that new media, social networking sites (SNSs), both web and mobile, and related technologies do not exist in isolation; rather they are critically embedded within other social spaces. Similarly, online queer spaces exist parallel to and in conjunction with the larger queer movement in the country. This book will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of gender studies, especially men's and masculinity studies, queer and LGBT studies, media and cultural studies, particularly new media and digital culture, sexuality and identity, politics, sociology and social anthropology, and South Asian studies.

Rohit K. Dasgupta is Lecturer in Media and Creative Industries at Loughborough University, UK. He has previously lectured at the University of Southampton and University of the Arts, London. He is the co-editor of Masculinity and Its Challenges in India (2014) and Rituparno Ghosh: Cinema, Gender and Art (2015), and has published essays in journals such as Convergence: International Journal of New Media Technologies; Digital Culture and Education; Economic and Political Weekly; Film Quarterly; International Journal of Fashion Studies; Theory, Culture and Society; South Asian History and Culture; and South Asian Review.

List of Illustrations. Acknowledgements. Glossary. Introduction 1. Postcolonial Residues and Contemporary Context 2. Media, Diversity and Emergence of the Cyberqueer in India 3. Virtual Intimacies on Digital Queer Platforms 4. 'Imagined' Queer Communities 5. Effeminophobia, Straight Acting and Global Queering 6. Dissident Citizenship Conclusion: Pleasures and politics of researching new queer media Appendixes. Bibliography. Index