Abstract
This article explores the ways in which the sexed body and its gendered subjectivity are constructed and expressed by Vaiṣṇava devotional poets of both sexes. In short, it is an experiment to see if a reading of bhakti poetry alongside gender theory can allow us to gain a better understanding of both fields. What happens when a bhakti poet chooses to speak as a man speaking as a woman, as opposed to a woman speaking as a woman? In the final analysis, neither the male poetic voice nor the female poetic voice necessarily offers a more direct or essential experience of bhakti, but rather both are expressions of the possible but inevitably contingent modes of experiencing oneself as a devotee. From a gender theory perspective, to choose to speak in a male poetic voice necessitates an imagining of the subjectivity of the Other, whereas the taking on of a female poetic voice forces the paradox of the Other becoming the Self.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
See also Kripal (1995: 192–97) for a discussion of Ramakrishna’s conception of the (feminine) “love-body.”
See Hardy 1983.
Butler argues that “[g]ender can denote a unity of experience, of sex, gender, and desire, only when sex can be understood in some sense to necessitate gender—where gender is a psychic and/or cultural designation of the self—and desire—where desire is heterosexual and therefore differentiates itself through an oppositional relation to that other gender it desires” (1990: 22; emphasis in the original). I believe, however, that the components that Butler isolates as describing the unified “experience” of gender—which is, after all, a partially elliptical definition since it places itself among its component parts—are more representative of the broader complex of sexuality where they do not necessitate one another and indeed can be transposed to account for a wide range of possible sexual relations.
striyāḥ puruṣasaṃyoge prītir abhyadhikā sadā (Mahābhārata 13.12.47).
Kāmasūtra 2.1.10–30 (Doniger and Kakar 2002: 30–36).
See Wilson 1996, especially her concluding statements regarding seeing through the gendered “I.”
It is worth remarking that while this applies in theory and is borne out by male perceptions of female ascetics, research such as Khandelwal (2004) has shown that many modern female ascetics do specifically identify as women and not as symbolic men. Not surprisingly, they have caught on to the fact that representing women as the agentive objects of sexual advances looks an awful lot like convenient scapegoating (Khandelwal 2004: 183).
See Ramanujan (1982) for a catalog of the methods by which female bhaktas extricate themselves from the world.
See, for instance, Harlan (1995) for an ethnographic account of the conflict between views of marriage necessitated by the Mīrābāī tradition versus local social practices.
It is the same qualities that render the female body particularly conducive to the experience of sexual enjoyment that render it vulnerable to pollution and disease. See Doniger O’Flaherty 1976; Smith 1992; and Dhand 2008: 131–32. This connection between sexual enjoyment and pollution is suggested by the myth of the deity Indra’s sin of brahminicide, with which he was afflicted after killing the brahmin demon Vṛtra. According to the myth, Indra passed the stain that resulted from his act of brahminicide to fire, the waters, and the trees, as well as to apsarases, celestial nymphs, or to women in general. This stain is associated with menstruation, which marks one of the periods in which women are considered to be at their most impure. In return for taking on this burden, however, Indra bestowed upon women the capacity to take pleasure in sexual intercourse until the time of childbirth. Ideologically, this draws a direct link between the body of pollution and the body of pleasure.
Ramanujan 1981: 63.
Ramanujan 1981: 76.
Ramanujan 1981: 70.
A similarly possessed subject is described as “My girl, who’s just learning to speak” (Nammāḻvār, Tiruvāymoḻi 5.6.2; Ramanujan 1981: 71).
For instance:
My dark one
stands there as if nothing’s
changed
after taking entire
into his maw
all three worlds
the gods
and the good kings
who hold their lands
as a mother would
a child in her womb—
and I
by his leave
have taken him entire
and I have him in my belly
for keeps (Nammāḻvār, Tiruvāymoḻi 8.7.9; Ramanujan 1981: 67).
The most explicit image is that of eating, insofar as the speaker compares Viṣṇu’s swallowing of the world with her own taking of the god into her belly. However, the inclusion of the image of a gestating child creates a double meaning that encompasses not only devouring but also motherhood.
Dehejia 1990: 113.
Dehejia 1990: 92–93.
Bhattacharya in Archer 1963: 119.
Dimock and Levertov 1967: 15.
Bly and Hirshfield 2004: 60.
Hawley 2005: 125.
Hawley 2005: 124.
Dehejia 1990: 77.
Dehejia 1990: 125–26.
See Haberman 1988: 94–108.
This account appears in Goldman 1993: 388, as well as in Hawley 1986: 235–36, Haberman 1988: 87 with n93, and Sangari 1990: 1538. Haberman recounts an alternative version of the narrative that portrays Mīrābāī as seeking to meet Sanātana Gosvāmin, rather than Jīva Gosvāmin, in Vṛndāvana. A third version of the narrative cited by Sangari depicts Mīrābāī as going to see Rūpa Gosvāmin, rather than Jīva, who initially turns her away because he does not take her seriously, but he is ultimately convinced by her reply that she is a genuine devotee and thus agrees to see her. Goldman, in contrast, depicts Jīva as being scandalized by Mīrābāī’s request and posits that he was “shamed by this [her reply] and thus had no choice but either to assent to the interview or, in essence, admit the fictive quality of the sexual and gender transformation that lies at the heart of Gauḍīya theology” (1993: 388).
References
Apffel Marglin, Frédérique. 1985. “Female Sexuality in the Hindu World.” In Clarissa W. Atkinson, Constance H. Buchanan, and Margaret R. Miles, eds., Immaculate and Powerful: The Female in Sacred Image and Social Reality, 39–60. Boston: Beacon Press.
Archer, W. G., ed. 1963. Love Songs of Vidyāpati (trans. Deben Bhattacharya). London: George Allen and Unwin.
Bly, Robert and Jane Hirshfield, trans. 2004. Mirabai: Ecstatic Poems. Boston: Beacon Press.
Butler, Judith. 1990. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge.
Butler, Judith. 1993. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex.” New York: Routledge.
Butler, Judith. 2004. Undoing Gender. New York: Routledge.
Craddock, Elaine. 2007. “The Anatomy of Devotion: The Life and Poetry of Karaikkal Ammaiyar.” In Tracy Pintchman, ed., Women’s Lives, Women’s Rituals in the Hindu Tradition, 131–47. New York: Oxford University Press.
Craddock, Elaine. 2010. Śiva’s Demon Devotee: Kāraikkāl Ammaiyār. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Dehejia, Vidya, trans. 1990. Āṇṭāḷ and Her Path of Love: Poems of a Woman Saint from South India. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Dhand, Arti. 2008. Woman as Fire, Woman as Sage: Sexual Ideology in the Mahābhārata. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Dimock, Edward C., Jr. 1989 [1966]. The Place of the Hidden Moon: Erotic Mysticism in the Vaiṣṇava-Sahajiyā Cult of Bengal. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Dimock, Edward C., Jr. and Denise Levertov, trans. 1967. In Praise of Krishna: Songs from the Bengali. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Doniger O’Flaherty, Wendy. 1976. The Origins of Evil in Hindu Mythology. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Doniger O’Flaherty, Wendy. 1980. Women, Androgynes, and Other Mythical Beasts. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Doniger, Wendy and Sudhir Kakar, trans. and ed. 2002. Kamasutra. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Foucault, Michel. 1990 [1976]. The History of Sexuality (trans. Robert Hurley). Volume 1: An Introduction. New York: Random House.
Goldman, Robert P. 1993. “Transsexualism, Gender, and Anxiety in Traditional India.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 113, 3: 374–401.
Haberman, David L. 1988. Acting as a Way to Salvation: A Study of Rāgānugā Bhakti Sādhana. New York: Oxford University Press.
Hardy, Friedhelm. 1983. Viraha-Bhakti: The Early History of Kṛṣṇa Devotion in South India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Harlan, Lindsey. 1995. “Abandoning Shame: Mīrā and the Margins of Marriage.” In Lindsey Harlan and Paul B. Courtright, eds., From the Margins of Hindu Marriage: Essays on Gender, Religion, and Culture, 204–27. New York: Oxford University Press.
Hawley, John Stratton. 1986. “Images of Gender in the Poetry of Krishna.” In Caroline Walker Bynum, Stevan Harrell, and Paula Richman, eds., Gender and Religion: On the Complexity of Symbols, 231–56. Boston: Beacon Press.
Hawley, John Stratton. 2005. Three Bhakti Voices: Mirabai, Surdas, and Kabir in Their Time and Ours. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Holdrege, Barbara A. 2015. Bhakti and Embodiment: Fashioning Divine Bodies and Devotional Bodies in Kṛṣṇa Bhakti. New York: Routledge.
Irigaray, Luce. 1980. “This Sex Which Is Not One” (trans. Claudia Reeder). In Elaine Marks and Isabelle de Courtivron, eds., New French Feminisms: An Anthology, 99–106. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.
Jamison, Stephanie W. 1996. Sacrificed Wife/Sacrificer’s Wife: Women, Ritual, and Hospitality in Ancient India. New York: Oxford University Press.
Khandelwal, Meena. 2004. Women in Ochre Robes: Gendering Hindu Renunciation. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Kripal, Jeffrey J. 1995. Kālī’s Child: The Mystical and the Erotic in the Life and Teachings of Ramakrishna. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Laqueur, Thomas. 1990. Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Mahābhārata. 1927–72. The Mahābhārata for the First Time Critically Edited (gen. eds. Vishnu S. Sukthankar [1927–1943], S. K. Belvalkar [1943–1961], and P. L. Vaidya [1961–1972], with the cooperation of other scholars). 19 volumes. Poona: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute.
Martin-Kershaw, Nancy M. 1995. “Dyed in the Color of Her Lord: Multiple Representations in the Mirabai Tradition.” Ph.D. dissertation, Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, California.
Natarajan, Kanchana. 2001. “Gendering of Early Indian Philosophy: A Study of Samkhyakarika.” Economic and Political Weekly 36, 17: 1398–1404.
Pechilis, Karen. 2012. Interpreting Devotion: The Poetry and Legacy of a Female Bhakti Saint of India. New York: Routledge.
Pintchman, Tracy. 1994. The Rise of the Goddess in the Hindu Tradition. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Ramanujan, A. K., trans. 1981. Hymns for the Drowning: Poems for Viṣṇu by Nammāḻvār. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Ramanujan, A. K. 1982. “On Women Saints.” In John Stratton Hawley and Donna Marie Wulff, eds., The Divine Consort: Rādhā and the Goddesses of India, 316–24. Berkeley: Graduate Theological Union.
Rosen, Steven J. 1996. “Rāgānugā Bhakti: Bringing Out the Inner Woman in Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava Sādhana.” In Steven J. Rosen, ed., Vaiṣṇavī: Women and the Worship of Krishna, 113–32. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.
Sanford, A. Whitney. 1997. “Real Men and Ideal Women: Construction of Gender in the Aṣṭayāmalīlā.” Journal of Vaiṣṇava Studies 5, 4: 163–86.
Sangari, Kumkum. 1990. “Mirabai and the Spiritual Economy of Bhakti.” Economic and Political Weekly 25, 28: 1537–52.
Siegel, Lee. 1978. Sacred and Profane Dimensions of Love in Indian Traditions as Exemplified in the Gītagovinda of Jayadeva. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Smith, Frederick M. 1992. “Indra’s Curse, Varuṇa’s Noose, and the Suppression of the Woman in the Vedic Śrauta Ritual.” In Julia Leslie, ed., Roles and Rituals for Hindu Women, 17–45. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.
Wilson, Liz. 1996. Charming Cadavers: Horrific Figurations of the Feminine in Indian Buddhist Hagiographic Literature. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Young, Serinity. 2007. “Female Mutability and Male Anxiety in an Early Buddhist Legend.” Journal of the History of Sexuality 16, 1: 14–39.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Foxen, A.P. Slender Waists and Severed Breasts: The Construction of Female Bodies and Feminine Subjectivities in Vaiṣṇava Bhakti Poetry. Hindu Studies (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11407-024-09360-x
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11407-024-09360-x