{"product_id":"the-sexual-life-of-english-9780822352273","title":"The Sexual Life of English","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eChandra explores how English became an Indian language during the colonial period of 1850-1930. Using archival and literary sources, she focuses on elite language education for girls and women.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“This book is an indispensable reference for those interested in challenging the traditional discourse of national, imperial, and postcolonial histories. This engaging interrogation of the seductive efficiencies of the English language in India, from a postcolonial feminist perspective, turns the way we conceive of the language of the colonizer, in effect, inside out.” - Kristin Hutchins, \u003ci\u003eWomen’s Studies\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"\u003ci\u003eThe Sexual Life of English\u003c\/i\u003e poses a significant challenge to modern Indian history, which has tended to take the links between language and culture and the gendered colonial self for granted, when engaging the latter at all. From now on, it will be impossible to grapple with liberalism, education, women, domesticity, class and caste, conjugality, nationalism, sexuality, and so much more without reckoning with Shefali Chandra's cogent, subversive arguments.\"—\u003cb\u003eAntoinette Burton\u003c\/b\u003e, author of \u003ci\u003eEmpire in Question: Reading, Writing, and Teaching British Imperialism\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Shefali Chandra's rethinking of cultural theory and modern Indian history is remarkable. Her major thesis, that Indian English has a brutal and loving social history of sexualization, will set a model for analogous studies in other national traditions. Her breakthrough argument is that English acquisition produced male cultural authority through the installation of biosexual difference. The point, then, is not the phallogocentrism of English as English but rather the installation of a 'native' phallogocentric power in the processes of colonization and postcolonization. All those who have found wanting the orthodox position in the historiography of subaltern studies will find \u003ci\u003eThe Sexual Life of English\u003c\/i\u003e an exhilarating read.\"—\u003cb\u003eTani E. Barlow\u003c\/b\u003e, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Question of Women in Chinese Feminism\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTable of Contents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNote on Transliteration and Spelling ix\u003cbr\u003e Part One \u003cbr\u003e 1. Learning Gender, Knowing English: An Introduction 3\u003cbr\u003e 2. \"The Prudent and Cautious Engrafting of English Upon Our Female Population\": Pedagogy and Performativity 29\u003cbr\u003e 3. \"The Language of the Bedroom\": Mimicry, Masculinity, and the Sexual Power of English 57\u003cbr\u003e 4. \"A New Generation of Hipless and Breastless Women . . . To the Forefront in Europe and America\": Literature, Social Class, and the Wider World of English 83\u003cbr\u003e Part Two \u003cbr\u003e 5. \"I Shall Read Pretty English Stories to My Mother and Translate Them into Marathi for Her\": Widowhood, Virtue, and the Secularization of Caste 117\u003cbr\u003e 6. \"Why Had I Ever Begun to Learn English?\": Desire, Labor, and the Transregional Orientation of Caste 137\u003cbr\u003e 7. Dosebai Jessawalla and the \"March of Advancement in the Face of Obloquy\" 157\u003cbr\u003e 8. Epilogue: \"I Am an Indian. I Have No Language\": Parvatibai Athavale and the Limits to English 175\u003cbr\u003e Salaams 191\u003cbr\u003e Notes 195\u003cbr\u003e Bibliography 245\u003cbr\u003e Index 267","brand":"Duke University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49406070194519,"sku":"9780822352273","price":25.19,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9780822352273.jpg?v=1730494425","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/the-sexual-life-of-english-9780822352273","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}