@article{2019:kannan:colonial_m,
title = {Colonial Material Collections and Representations of Devadasi Bodies in the Public Sphere in the Early 20th-Century South India},
year = {2019},
note = {This article discusses how the politics of morality in the early
20th-century South India, in its gendered nation-building exercise,
reified a distinction between sacred/profane by using devadasis’
bodies as material objects in the public sphere. Traditional
performers of dance and music, devadasis were chosen to represent the
profane in a series of historical developments in which both Europeans
and Indian colonial elites participated in constructing and using the
categories of the sacred and profane to classify sex and body as
material, profane, and obscene. Specifically targeting devadasis,
these developments resulted in ostracization and criminalization of
devadasis and their communities. Using statues, poems, and literature
as examples, this article shows how devadasis were collected as
material objects and used to represent the notion that some bodies and
sex were fundamentally materialistic whilst others were not, such as
that of the “new woman” who was imagined to be an ideal woman, and
the guardian of the sacred space in the colonial and postcolonial
India.},
journal = {Anthropos},
pages = {531--546},
author = {Kannan, Rajalakshmi Nadadur},
volume = {114},
number = {2}
}