(In)visible spaces: Probing into the politics of same sex belonging in Geetanjali Shree’s The Roof Beneath Their Feet

ABSTRACT

The paper adopts a close textual analysis of the representation of same sex desire in Geetanjali Shree’s novel The Roof Beneath Their Feet (2013), originally published in Hindi as Tirohit (2007), as it tends to dismantle the domestic realm as a heteronormative space. It focuses on clandestine and parallel arrangements of togetherness forged out of love and longing formed within the heterosexual family, which imparts a sense of belonging. Using belonging as a conceptual framework, it examines how female sexual subjectivity is mediated through spatial markers of intimacy as evident through the use of sub-urban local community spaces (mohalla), secrecy, and gossip as modes of articulation. Rather than understanding families in terms of hetero/homosexual binary, it tries to locate same sex familial belonging within specific networks of power relationships such as class, gender, and community thereby outlining the shifting connotations of desire, visibility, invisibility and female sexual subjectivity. Thus, drawing from Feminist Geography and Queer theory, it demonstrates how same sex belonging, which is manifested through the “experiencing” of desire, is both performatively constituted and also influenced by the politics of intersectionality.

KEYWORDS:

• Heteronormativity
• family
• space
• belonging
• secrecy
• same sex desire

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Andarmahal in upper-class zamindar houses in Bengal denoted a feminized space. Many of Rabindranath Tagore’s fictions use it as a structure of spatial segregation of the private and the feminine. Zenana denotes a similar all-female space in Muslim households.

2 Geetanjali Shree won the International Booker Prize for Ret Samadhi translated as The Tomb of Sand by Daisy Rockwell in 2022.

3 Menon (2007) describes “counter-heteronormative” as a range of political assertions centring on the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, hijra, kothi, and others that directly or indirectly challenge the institution of patriarchal monogamous marriage.

4 In this paper, the term “queer” is used to describe both forms of identification with non-normative sexual and gender categories as well as practices that oppose the dominant forms of sexuality.

5 Lesbian happens to be a political identity category that has been popularized in activist, academic circles, and social discourse. However, the idea of same sex love or erotic relationships among women is not restricted to the people who consciously identify with discrete identity categories.

6 Ruth Vanita argues that there is a tendency to interpret instances of lesbianism as “situational;” an outcome of a particular situation, where there is an absence of male figures or women are chanced upon staying together. However, Ashwini Sukhtankar in her Introduction in Facing the Mirror: Lesbian Writings from India (1999) argues even this factor is as important as an individual’s innate inclination accounting for lesbianism.

7 “Masti” is used colloquially in India, which literally translates into “fun.” However, it has been likened to the use of words like “yaari” or “dosti” by R Raj Rao, Hoshang Merchant and others as localized terms capturing the slippage between friendship and homoeroticism or even any kind of transgressive act.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ankita Chatterjee

Ankita CHATTERJEE is a senior scholar pursuing PhD at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, National Institute of Technology, Durgapur. Her research interests are in the areas of gender, space, queer and Indian literature. Email: [email protected]\ [email protected]

Sutanuka Banerjee

Sutanuka BANERJEE is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, National Institute of Technology, Durgapur. She obtained her PhD from the Department of Culture and Global Studies, Aalborg University, Denmark. Her research areas focus on Popular Culture, Gender Studies and Literature. Email: [email protected]