negotiating genders in a Bengali festival
- Categories
- Book/Boek
- Creator
- Ferrari, Fabrizio
- Publish Year
- 2010
- Shelfmark
- V IND 1A 2010 - B
- Thesaurus
- riten, goden, godinnen, festivals, hindoeïsme, volkscultuur, India
- Description
- study on the Bengali gajan festival dedicated to Dharmaraj, a village god in the Rarh region of Bengal. The gajan is the dramatic representation of an hierogamy—the marriage of a god and goddess—and a recreation of the life-cycle of earth. The author describes the approach of the gajan to gender. The central deity of the gajan is a goddess identified with the earth. To please such a goddess, male devotees must acknowledge the pain they inflict towards the female world and become 'ritual women'. Conversely, as part of the festival, women display their generative power and provoke the jealousy of men by ritually mocking conception and delivery. The outcome of the ritual is that their suffering is acknowledged and transformed into power.