Body, Desire and Identity: A Textual Analysis of the Film Chitrangada-The Crowning Wish

What determines one’s gender? How are subjects formed? These questions are predicated on ontology or one’s knowledge of self. With regard to Rituparno Ghosh’s 2012 film Chitrangada: The Crowning Wish the paper reappraises these questions in order to analyse their significance for queer aesthetics: how do people navigate the most intimate spaces-their body, desire and identity? How does an artist explore his/her medium, (here film) to examine and reflect upon his/her self? The paper also aims to examine how film as a genre opens up new possibilities for cinematic autobiography, especially queer autobiography, an area that is relatively unexplored and under theorized.

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