Transgressive Spatialities: Mapping Identity and Liminality in Contemporary Queer Narratives from Assam

Abstract

From Descartes' cogito to the postmodern fluidity, the notion of identity has acquired newer dimensions. Identity remains an important rhetorical resource for non-heterosexual people. Butler's notion of gender as performative has been fundamental in this discourse on the queer people who debunk compulsory heterosexuality as a given. An exploration of the spaces that the non-heteronormative people occupy is pertinent to understanding the lived realities of these people. Using the Foucauldian notion of heterotopia, this study tries to understand the liminal and all kinds of alternative spaces that they inhabit which is intense and disruptive. They are also sites of resistance and transgression. In Assamese literature, the heterosexual ideology dominates the hegemonic knowledge production spaces. The non-heteronormative people occupy the spaces in crevices, and peripheries and cannot claim a distinct positionality. Queer narratives from Assam reflect a new direction in this regard. The Narratives under study by Moushumi Kandali, Aruni Kashyap and Panchanan Hazarika present how these narratives from Assam present the lived realities of the queer population and how they explicate the spatial dimension of the same-sex desire, and in the process how they negotiate the ontological authenticity of the non-heteronormative people to form their identity.