"Unfinished Gestures" presents the social and cultural history of courtesans in South India who are generally called devadasis, focusing on their encounters with colonial modernity in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Following a hundred years of vociferous social reform, including a 1947 law that criminalized their lifestyles, the women in devadasi communities contend with severe social stigma and economic and cultural disenfranchisement. Adroitly combining ethnographic fieldwork with historical research, Davesh Soneji provides a comprehensive portrait of these marginalized women and unsettles received ideas about relations among them, the aesthetic roots of their performances, and the political efficacy of social reform in their communities. Poignantly narrating the history of these women, Soneji argues for the recognition of aesthetics and performance as a key form of subaltern self-presentation and self-consciousness. Ranging over courtly and private salon performances of music and dance by devadasis in the nineteenth century, the political mobilization of devadasi identity in the twentieth century, and the post-reform lives of women in these communities today, "Unfinished Gestures" charts the historical fissures that lie beneath cultural modernity in South India.

About the Author
Davesh Soneji is associate professor of South Asian religions at McGill University. He is coeditor of Performing Pasts: Reinventing the Arts in Modern South India and editor of Bharatanatyam: A Reader.

Reviews
"Sensitive, sympathetic, and very well-written, Unfinished Gestures moves the debate about devadasis in a new and interesting direction and will be the standard bearer in the field. Soneji's ethnographic work supports his historical claims and brings to life the poignancy of contemporary devadasis' lives." (Janaki Bakhle, Columbia University)"



Book Information
ISBN 9780226768106
Author Davesh Soneji
Format Paperback
Page Count 312
Imprint University of Chicago Press
Publisher The University of Chicago Press
Weight(grams) 482g
Dimensions(mm) 23mm * 15mm * 2mm