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Intertextual Sexuality
Author(s) -
Hall Kira
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
journal of linguistic anthropology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.463
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1548-1395
pISSN - 1055-1360
DOI - 10.1525/jlin.2005.15.1.125
Subject(s) - human sexuality , transgender , gender studies , sociology , ideology , articulation (sociology) , identity (music) , sexual identity , collective identity , aesthetics , art , political science , politics , law
This article examines articulations of class, identity, and desire as performed by a community of kotisin northern India, a transgender group that impersonates a second transgender group known as hijras in a staged event called "hijra‐acting." Through a linguistic parody of lower‐class hijras performing a birth celebration for their upperclass patrons, kotis critique the class‐based animosity between hijra and gay sexualities in contemporary India, spoofing the sexual desires associated with both groups as inferior to their own. The analysis demonstrates that identity and desire are best understood as mutually constituted intertextual phenomena, with both importantly reliant on ideological linkages of language and socioeconomic class for their articulation.