Dislocating West-centric feminist-queer politics from Bengal: Bhawaiya and the sexual subaltern

This article examines the political and conceptual possibilities of defiance to marriage as a gendered norm through the deviant words expressed in the lyrics of Bangla (Bengali) folk songs, in particular those in the Bhawaiya tradition. Bhawaiya is famous for its lyrics of embodied or sensual love, often in the form of deviant and “illicit” relations outside of marriage, expressed through the female voice of the songs. When performed, the songs can evoke similar deviant emotions in the performers and the listeners, creating an affective atmosphere and constructing a “temporal subjectivity” with the emotions of the female subjects of the songs, which I call the “sexual subaltern.” I argue that throughout the colonial and postcolonial nationalist reforms and the emergence of strict reproductive heteropatriarchy in Bengal, the lyrics of Bhawaiya songs remained popular under the radar and as the artifacts of deviant sexual desire of the female subjects of the songs. This article goes further in examining how the temporal and affective subjectivity of the sexual subaltern, with deviant and defiant emotions, as constructed through these songs, can offer an alternative conceptual tool to dislocate West-centric feminist-queer politics and provide a global feminist remapping.