Impersonations

Drawing on multisited ethnographic fieldwork and performance analysis, this book centers on an insular community of Smarta brahmin men from the Kuchipudi village in Telugu-speaking South India, who are required to don strī-vēṣam (woman’s guise) and impersonate female characters from Hindu religio...

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Glavni autor: Mruthinti Kamath, Harshita
Format: Online
Jezik:engleski
Izdano: University of California Press 2021
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author Mruthinti Kamath, Harshita
author_browse Mruthinti Kamath, Harshita
author_facet Mruthinti Kamath, Harshita
author_sort Mruthinti Kamath, Harshita
collection Directory of Open Access Books
description Drawing on multisited ethnographic fieldwork and performance analysis, this book centers on an insular community of Smarta brahmin men from the Kuchipudi village in Telugu-speaking South India, who are required to don strī-vēṣam (woman’s guise) and impersonate female characters from Hindu religious narratives. According to the hagiography of Siddhendra, the founding saint of Kuchipudi dance, every brahmin man from a hereditary Kuchipudi family must don strī-vēṣam at least once in his life, a prescription that still resonates in the village today. Impersonation, the term used to indicate the donning of gender guise (vēṣam), is not simply a performative mandate for Kuchipudi brahmin men but also a practice of power that creates normative ideals of brahmin masculinity in village performance and everyday life. However, the construction of brahmin masculinity against the backdrop of impersonation is highly contingent, particularly on account of the expansion of Kuchipudi in the latter half of the twentieth century from a localized village performance to a transnational Indian “classical” dance tradition. By shifting from village to urban and transnational spaces, the book traces the technologies of normativity that create, sustain, and undermine normative ideals of gender, caste, and sexuality through the embodied practice of impersonation in contemporary South India.
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spelling doab-20.500.12854ir-385912025-02-11T07:55:01Z Impersonations Mruthinti Kamath, Harshita impersonation Kuchipudi brahmin masculinity Telugu South India Indian dance strī-vēṣam woman’s guise gender caste thema EDItEUR::N History and Archaeology::NH History::NHF Asian history thema EDItEUR::Q Philosophy and Religion::QR Religion and beliefs::QRA Religion: general thema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JH Sociology and anthropology::JHM Anthropology Drawing on multisited ethnographic fieldwork and performance analysis, this book centers on an insular community of Smarta brahmin men from the Kuchipudi village in Telugu-speaking South India, who are required to don strī-vēṣam (woman’s guise) and impersonate female characters from Hindu religious narratives. According to the hagiography of Siddhendra, the founding saint of Kuchipudi dance, every brahmin man from a hereditary Kuchipudi family must don strī-vēṣam at least once in his life, a prescription that still resonates in the village today. Impersonation, the term used to indicate the donning of gender guise (vēṣam), is not simply a performative mandate for Kuchipudi brahmin men but also a practice of power that creates normative ideals of brahmin masculinity in village performance and everyday life. However, the construction of brahmin masculinity against the backdrop of impersonation is highly contingent, particularly on account of the expansion of Kuchipudi in the latter half of the twentieth century from a localized village performance to a transnational Indian “classical” dance tradition. By shifting from village to urban and transnational spaces, the book traces the technologies of normativity that create, sustain, and undermine normative ideals of gender, caste, and sexuality through the embodied practice of impersonation in contemporary South India. 2021-02-10T12:58:18Z 2019-06-19 10:43:50 2020-04-01T10:17:28Z 2019 book 1005099 OCN: 1135849579 http://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/25002 9780520301665 https://directory.doabooks.org/handle/20.500.12854/38591 eng open access image/jpeg image/jpeg image/jpeg image/jpeg n/a n/a n/a n/a https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/20.500.12657/25002/1/impersonations.pdf https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/20.500.12657/25002/1/impersonations.pdf https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/20.500.12657/25002/1/impersonations.pdf https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/20.500.12657/25002/1/impersonations.pdf University of California Press 10.1525/luminos.72 10.1525/luminos.72 19856893-4bf2-4e3e-9137-c7692d64e4c1 9780520301665 245 Oakland open access
spellingShingle impersonation
Kuchipudi
brahmin masculinity
Telugu
South India
Indian dance
strī-vēṣam
woman’s guise
gender
caste
thema EDItEUR::N History and Archaeology::NH History::NHF Asian history
thema EDItEUR::Q Philosophy and Religion::QR Religion and beliefs::QRA Religion: general
thema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JH Sociology and anthropology::JHM Anthropology
Mruthinti Kamath, Harshita
Impersonations
title Impersonations
title_full Impersonations
title_fullStr Impersonations
title_full_unstemmed Impersonations
title_short Impersonations
title_sort impersonations
topic impersonation
Kuchipudi
brahmin masculinity
Telugu
South India
Indian dance
strī-vēṣam
woman’s guise
gender
caste
thema EDItEUR::N History and Archaeology::NH History::NHF Asian history
thema EDItEUR::Q Philosophy and Religion::QR Religion and beliefs::QRA Religion: general
thema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JH Sociology and anthropology::JHM Anthropology
topic_facet impersonation
Kuchipudi
brahmin masculinity
Telugu
South India
Indian dance
strī-vēṣam
woman’s guise
gender
caste
thema EDItEUR::N History and Archaeology::NH History::NHF Asian history
thema EDItEUR::Q Philosophy and Religion::QR Religion and beliefs::QRA Religion: general
thema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JH Sociology and anthropology::JHM Anthropology
url 1005099
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