ICGC BROWN BAG TALK titled "Globalizing through the Vernacular: Transnationalism, translation and hegemony in the Indian GTB Movement" presented by Aniruddha Dutta will be held Friday, March 1st, 2013 at 12:00pm in 537 Heller Hall.
The presentation will explore how the globalizing expansion of LGBT and HIV-AIDS activism into global south locations such as India relies on regional and translocal communities of gender-variant persons, and yet subordinates them and associated discourses of gender/sexual difference within the tiered hierarchies of LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender; particularly GTB) organizations and transnationally-funded HIV-AIDS intervention projects. Engaging with debates in transnational sexuality studies, I will argue that lower class/caste communities and discourses are reduced as 'local' or 'vernacular' relative to national and transnational formations of activism and discourse, even as translations with subcultural languages of gender/sexual variance enable the expansion and hegemony of institutional categories of identity and representation. Drawing upon five years of ethnographic research in eastern India, the presentation will critique how hegemonic institutional activism produces lower class/caste groups as a victimized minority and exploitable labor pool, rather than as active participants in the transnational movement for LGBT rights.
Please see attached flyer.
A.Dutta.pdf
