Queer(y)ing the ‘Cure’ : Medicalisation and Resistance in Post-Emergency India 1977-2020

Price, Rianna and Sutton, Deborah and Wright, Stephanie (2024) Queer(y)ing the ‘Cure’ : Medicalisation and Resistance in Post-Emergency India 1977-2020. PhD thesis, Lancaster University.

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Abstract

This thesis represents the first comprehensive history of the medicalisation of queerness in the post-Emergency context in India (1970-2020). It is also the first history of resistance to medicalised narratives and practice. Through analysing institutional records, specifically psychiatric studies, and queer-created sources, such as print media, online blogs, and oral testimony, the thesis traces the relationships between medicine, culture, and queerness in the Indian context. The thesis uses previously unused source bases to create a queer-led history of both medicalisation and resistance to pathologised narratives and curative practice. From this, the thesis explicates the role of the family in medicalisation – a perspective missing from studies focused exclusively on psychiatric materials. In exploring the role of the family and the medical practitioner, the thesis deconstructs pathologised understandings and attitudes, and reconstructs curative practice inside the clinic and the home. In doing so, it provides a nuanced understanding of the myriad forms of violence faced by queer individuals, as well as theoretical constructions to analyse the harms faced by the community. Additionally, the thesis contextualises the medicalisation of queerness within broader events. It engages with the legacy of colonial homophobia and the legal battles surrounding Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code. Moving beyond this, I argue that the interventions of the Emergency (1975-1977) paved the way for subsequent queer medicalisation. Similarly, the economic liberalisation of the 1990s provided access, support, and resources for an urban, English-speaking, queer elite who created publications that resisted medicalisation and criminalisation. Furthermore, the thesis reflects on the rise of Hindutva politics and the resurgence of medicalised narratives veiled in concerns about the nation. Through this queercentred approach, we see how histories of medicalisation must include accounts and narratives of resistance to pathologisation to understand how medicalisation extends beyond the clinic.