Sociocultural Constructions of Sexuality in South Asia

This short introduction focuses on the historical and constructed nature of sexuality, on the normative aspects of the discourses that develop around it, as well as on its inevitable entanglements with issues of societal control, power relations, and violence. It aims to show how the papers in the present panel converge in highlighting the multifaceted and polymorphic role of various South Asian discourses on sexuality in their attempted ‘construction’ of a normed individual as the basic building block of the society envisioned by the authors of those very discourses.