TY - JOUR
T1 - Phantom limbs
T2 - South Indian dance and immigrant reifications of the female body
AU - Ram, Kalpana
PY - 2005/2
Y1 - 2005/2
N2 - This paper explores the phenomenology of migration and gender, seeking to understand how it is that a certain construction of 'Indianness' and of womanhood finds one form of expression in the enrolment of middle-class girls in south Indian and other 'classical' dance schools. The paper argues that the immigrant situation recalls and opens up to be retrieved, an earlier history of nationalism. It does so, not in the form of intellectual recall, but because the structure of affect in the immigrant present resembles an earlier crisis of the emergent middle class under British colonialism. In this situation, the patriarchal universe of the immigrant requires wives and daughters to magically function as phantom limbs, providing an unstable and illusory impression of continuing to enjoy a grip on the world. The paper interrogates this impression from the perspective of young Indian women deeply involved in Indian dance.
AB - This paper explores the phenomenology of migration and gender, seeking to understand how it is that a certain construction of 'Indianness' and of womanhood finds one form of expression in the enrolment of middle-class girls in south Indian and other 'classical' dance schools. The paper argues that the immigrant situation recalls and opens up to be retrieved, an earlier history of nationalism. It does so, not in the form of intellectual recall, but because the structure of affect in the immigrant present resembles an earlier crisis of the emergent middle class under British colonialism. In this situation, the patriarchal universe of the immigrant requires wives and daughters to magically function as phantom limbs, providing an unstable and illusory impression of continuing to enjoy a grip on the world. The paper interrogates this impression from the perspective of young Indian women deeply involved in Indian dance.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=27944489625&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/07256860500074342
DO - 10.1080/07256860500074342
M3 - Review article
AN - SCOPUS:27944489625
SN - 0725-6868
VL - 26
SP - 121
EP - 137
JO - Journal of Intercultural Studies
JF - Journal of Intercultural Studies
IS - 1-2
ER -