Sons and Mother-Land: Gendered Performance of Nationality and its Criticism in Indian Cinema-Texts
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Abstract
As nation is construed as a category of identification, it needs to be continually performed and most of these performances remain gendered in nature, especially with the maternalisation of the nation and territory. Cinema, with its power to impact millions, becomes one of those powerful mediums through which gendered performances of nation takes place. In this article, we look at some of these sites of production of gendered nationalism to study the complex ways in which the idea and discourse of Mother Nation is performed on the celluloid screen. The article also analyses cinema as a participatory space where performances ideologically confront each other as it looks at the films which look critically at the maternal rhetoric of nationalism and question or reject the sacrificial narrative of motherland. Looking at the case of certain films in South India, we also analyse such cine-narratives which come from a culturally and linguistically distinct location from the aspirational territory of Bharat Mata to see how maternal invocations from these sites complicate the gendered representation of nationality and bring a dynamic discourse of identity assertion.
How to Cite
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Bharat Mata; cinema; gendered nationalism; identity; India; performativity; South India; visual culture
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