Spectral Trans Figures: The Ambiguous and Atemporal Hijra Body in Narcopolis

Abstract

Over the past decade, the hijra, a marginalised subculture referred to as the ‘third sex' in India and ‘transgender' in Western contexts has become a prominent presence in Indian anglophone literary fiction. This paper delves into the anatomies of aesthetics and ideologies that make the feminine-identifying hijra body coherent in Jeet Thayil’s Booker Prize shortlisted novel Narcopolis (2012). It explores how the novel enables the reader to create a stable image of the hijra body through acts of voyeurism and recasts this body into ambiguity by writing its existence outside temporal logics. It ultimately proposes that this is a project of epistemic violence that creates certain modes of trans narratives within which hijra lives and bodies are memorialised, never living.

Keywords:

• South Asia
• literature
• transgender studies
• bodies
• Narcopolis
• queer studies

Disclosure Statement

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

Notes

1 I borrow this from Michel Foucault to denote spaces that are mirror images of utopias that are unsettling and contradictory.