WGSS Speaker Series: Indian Sex Life, Durba Mitra

In this talk, I analyze how ideas of deviant female sexuality, often named as the “prostitute,” became foundational to modern social thought in and about colonial India. I ask: how might we write more robust histories of women’s sexuality and global histories of sexuality by reframing the prostitute as a concept critical to modern disciplinary knowledge? This history reveals a dangerous civilizational logic that sits at the heart of modern social thought built on the control and erasure of women’s sexuality. This logic continues to hold sway in present-day South Asia and across the postcolonial world.
Durba Mitra is Assistant Professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality and Carol K. Pforzheimer Assistant Professor at the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University. Mitra works at the intersection of feminist and queer studies, focusing on the history of sexuality in South Asia and the colonial and postcolonial world. Her forthcoming book, Indian Sex Life: Sexuality and the Colonial Origins of Modern Social Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, January 2020), demonstrates how ideas of deviant female sexuality became foundational to modern social thought.