Battles Against the Body: Reconstructing Femininity in Patriarchal Religio-social Spaces. (January 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Ghosh, Ratul
• Is Part Of: Society and culture in South Asia. Volume 2:Number 1(2016:Jan.)
• Page Start: 103
• Page End: 126
• Publication Date: 2016-01
• Subjects: Femininity and physicality -- embodiment -- religion -- culture; Sociology -- South Asia -- Periodicals; Ethnology -- South Asia -- Periodicals; South Asia -- Social life and customs -- Periodicals; South Asia -- Social conditions -- Periodicals; 301.095405
• DOI: 10.1177/2393861715609825
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2393-8617

Abstract

Abstract: Femininity has been a social construct; the biological attributes of female sexuality had provided mere supporting logics to those constructing authorities which could easily be identified in patriarchal sociopolitical agencies. Philosophy, on the other hand, has always been used by religion as well as governmental authorities to provide a theoretical framework for its pragmatics of dominance and discrimination. The proposed article would focus on how femininity has been persistently considered as a corporeal phenomenon in the socio-religious domain and would explore how the initiated women had to fight against their own body to fit in that discriminating and dominating social structure and religious pragmatics. In the course of this discussion, this article would also focus on politicisation of feminine corporeality in ancient as well as modern societies to exemplify the subtle dominance of patriarchy. Thus, this article would try to understand the making of female subjectivity through this inner battle in the arena of a phallocentric socio-religious narrative.