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<p>This paper examines the contingent formation and negotiation of lesbian and queer identities among rural and working-class women in India, analyzing how intersecting structures of caste, class, marriage, and kinship circumscribe, yet also enable, the articulation of same-sex intimacy and belonging. It argues that dominant academic discourses on politicized lesbian and queer identities remain overtly invested in Western, urban, and upper-middle-class experiences, thereby obscuring the heterogeneous and localized expressions of same-sex desire among underprivileged women. Drawing on Maya Sharma’s foundational ethnographic memoir <i>Loving Women: Being Lesbian in Unprivileged India</i> (2020), this paper explores how women who may not identify with the nomenclature “lesbian” nonetheless sustain affective and sexual partnerships within contested social and spatial boundaries. Engaging with theoretical frameworks proposed by Michel Foucault, Henri Lefebvre, Michel de Certeau, and Sara Ahmed, the paper investigates how these women inhabit, negotiate, and reconfigure space in ways that transgress, subvert, or tactically align with dominant socio-cultural structures. Positioned at the intersection of feminist geography and queer phenomenology, the article advances a postcolonial critique of spatial normativity, proposing that <i>Loving Women</i> rearticulates space as a lived and insurgent form of queer world-making. In doing so, it contributes to broader debates on precarity, resistance, and belonging in South Asia.</p>

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Beyond normative cartographies: queer spatial reclamation and heterotopic belonging in Maya Sharma’s Loving Women

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2026年4月21日

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  • Chanchal De Boxi,
  • Seema Singh,
  • Debdas Roy

摘要

This paper examines the contingent formation and negotiation of lesbian and queer identities among rural and working-class women in India, analyzing how intersecting structures of caste, class, marriage, and kinship circumscribe, yet also enable, the articulation of same-sex intimacy and belonging. It argues that dominant academic discourses on politicized lesbian and queer identities remain overtly invested in Western, urban, and upper-middle-class experiences, thereby obscuring the heterogeneous and localized expressions of same-sex desire among underprivileged women. Drawing on Maya Sharma’s foundational ethnographic memoir Loving Women: Being Lesbian in Unprivileged India (2020), this paper explores how women who may not identify with the nomenclature “lesbian” nonetheless sustain affective and sexual partnerships within contested social and spatial boundaries. Engaging with theoretical frameworks proposed by Michel Foucault, Henri Lefebvre, Michel de Certeau, and Sara Ahmed, the paper investigates how these women inhabit, negotiate, and reconfigure space in ways that transgress, subvert, or tactically align with dominant socio-cultural structures. Positioned at the intersection of feminist geography and queer phenomenology, the article advances a postcolonial critique of spatial normativity, proposing that Loving Women rearticulates space as a lived and insurgent form of queer world-making. In doing so, it contributes to broader debates on precarity, resistance, and belonging in South Asia.