Sayantan Datta, Assistant Professor of Practice, Krea-CWP has co-authored a paper titled ‘We Will Keep Clapping till the End’: Hijra Narratives on Their Taali published in the latest issue of the prestigious Indian Journal of Gender Studies. The paper is co-authored with Professor Pushpesh Kumar, Professor of Sociology, University of Hyderabad.
In a first of its kind attempt, the authors counter the commonsensical notions of the taali (clap), a quintessential marker of the hijras, a south asian gender-transgressive community. To do so, they draw upon years of fieldwork and in-depth interviews with members of the hijra subculture. Focusing on how the taali is deployed to both cement hijra belongingness and as a mode of protest, the authors trace the acoustic underpinnings of what it means to be a hijra in contemporary India.
