Slender Waists and Severed Breasts: The Construction of Female Bodies and Feminine Subjectivities in Vaiṣṇava Bhakti Poetry

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.