Siobhan Lambert-Hurley

Elusive Lives

Gender, Autobiography, and the Self in Muslim South Asia

• Gebundenes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

Siobhan Lambert-Hurley is Reader in International History in the Department of History at the University of Sheffield.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Stanford University Press
• Seitenzahl: 296
• Erscheinungstermin: 31. Juli 2018
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 231mm x 152mm x 25mm
• Gewicht: 590g
• ISBN-13: 9781503604803
• ISBN-10: 1503604802
• Artikelnr.: 49674282

Autorenporträt

Siobhan Lambert-Hurley is Reader in International History in the Department of History at the University of Sheffield.

Inhaltsangabe

Contents and Abstracts
Introduction: The ultimate unveiling
chapter abstract
What does it mean to write autobiography in a cultural context, like Muslim
South Asia, that idealizes women's anonymity? Framed as "the ultimate form
of unveiling," the introduction links the book to a feminist project of
decoding a gendered self and a history of the everyday. South Asian Muslim
women are defined as a category before their autobiographical writings are
introduced as a largely modern phenomenon connected to Muslim reformism.
The book's analysis is situated within the context of Muslim autobiography
and historical approaches to autobiography. Methods and sources are also
considered in terms of the book's move beyond individual authors and texts
to a broad base of materials constituting the autobiographical sample. It
elucidates the complicated and sometimes haphazard research process by
which materials were recovered from smaller libraries and private
collections in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh-with the home, the street,
and the market as an archive.
1Life/history/archive
chapter abstract
A major concern of theorists has been to define autobiography as a genre
apart from other literary forms. Applying these debates to Muslim South
Asia, chapter 1 considers how to find and fit "real-life" historical
sources into the theoretical boxes dreamt up by academics often limited to
European and North American materials. In doing so, it explores the range
of possible sources to be included in a "life history archive"-from
autobiographical biographies and biographical autobiographies to
travelogues, reformist literature, novels, devotionalism, letters, diaries,
interviews, speeches, film, and ghosted narratives. Ultimately, it settles
on the term autobiographical writing to capture the constructed life in
written form while linking to autobiography's global canon. The
heterogeneous practices of South Asian Muslim women-not always complete,
coherent, linear, self-centered, or driven by personality-are thus opened
to analysis.
2The sociology of authorship
chapter abstract
This study is limited to the autobiographical writings of South Asian
Muslim women. The majority of authors from the sixteenth century into the
twenty-first century may be characterized as elite: upper- or middle-class
or, in the context of Muslim South Asia, sharif to indicate "noble" status.
Many were also highly educated-often to the degree level and beyond in the
twentieth century. In most cases, this education enabled authors to pursue
an occupation when few women and even fewer elite Muslim women did so: as
women at court, educationalists, writers, politicians, and performers. The
function of autobiography as a vehicle for sharif redefinition above all,
but also nationalism, historicism and didacticism, literary creativity, and
performance is thus highlighted alongside a more general impulse: to
narrate a life momentous for Muslim women living at a particular time and
place.
3The autobiographical map
chapter abstract
In what ways does an author's physical location, religious affiliation,
linguistic choice, and (un)intended readership affect why and how South
Asian Muslim women write their lives? In terms of motivation, this chapter
demonstrates autobiography's links to sharif redefinition in the reformist
and princely locations that act as hubs for women's autobiographical
expression. It also points to how socioeconomic, cultural, and historical
specificities enabled women's autobiography to flourish within certain
Muslim locations in the modern era. Women's associations with urban
conurbations underline the city's role in offering cultural leadership to
autobiographical expression and a home to religious minorities wanting to
"talk back." In terms of autobiographical construction, performative models
are employed to argue for the importance of specific audiences in shaping
how Muslim women crafted their autobiographical outputs at different
historical moments: from the colonial to the postcolonial, the reformist to
the nationalist, the regional to the global.
4Staging the self
chapter abstract
How do different literary milieus-published/unpublished, magazine/book,
translated/edited-shape an autobiography's form and content? This chapter
underlines how different processes of production introduced new
actors-editors, translators, cowriters, and publishers-that could be as
complicit as the author in the construction of a gendered Muslim self. A
detailed case study of Begam Khurshid Mirza's autobiography-which appeared
in four iterations-is employed here to consider "a performer in
performance." The analysis shows how the author's identity and assumptions
as a Pakistani actress, wife, and mother could be overwritten by a
protective family, feminist editors, and an Indian press keen to tailor her
interests, perspectives, emotions, and sexuality to their own expectations.
The chapter's conclusions, though elaborated with reference to Muslim South
Asia, have important implications for how historians and gender scholars
interrogate individual texts for women's agency and subjectivity.
5Autobiographical genealogies
chapter abstract
Gender theorists have long articulated a "difference" model applicable to
women's autobiography-but do women actually write their lives differently
than men? This chapter interrogates this theoretical frame by using a
closed case study of one extended family in which the cultural milieu was
largely shared to examine how autobiography's form, style, and content were
contingent on gender and time. Chosen for analysis is Bombay's Tyabji clan
on account of its many and varied contributions to the autobiographical
genre, including family diaries, travelogues, speeches, memoirs,
autobiographies, and articles that date from the mid-nineteenth century to
the near present. Ultimately, the model for theorizing women's
autobiography in terms of gender difference is shown to fall short when
applied to the Tyabji case. By essentializing women and men across cultures
and time, it fails to recover the specific subjectivities associated with
different global locations at particular historical moments.
Coda: Unveiling and its attributes
chapter abstract
The coda returns to the metaphor of unveiling to explicate the gendered
historical phenomenon of autobiographical writing in Muslim South Asia. It
argues that to write autobiography-to narrate childhood, marriage, domestic
life, everyday rituals, trials and tribulations, perhaps even one's
thoughts and feelings-is to transcend the most severe limits on women's
bodies and voices alike. At the same time, it uses the ambiguity of
unveiling in real-life situations to point to how the unveiling in
autobiography may not be total or straightforward. It may be symbolic,
convoluted, partial, or paradoxical. It may be undertaken only by
particular individuals or groups for particular purposes at particular
moments. Moreover, the historical parameters-when and where, but also how
and why-are crucial to understanding how this bold act was constructed and
construed.