HOUSEMAIDS AND THE HAPTIC CODE DURING COVID TIMES
(2022) p.25-33- Abstract
This chapter focuses on the dominantly gendered house-help in India: the cooks, cleaners, and maids during the pandemic-triggered lockdowns in Delhi and its metropolitan areas. Even if we are scared to enter people's homes, we have to come out to work to sustain our lives. The case studies of these three women point to the precarity and 'unrepresentability' which turn the previously invisible figure of the maid to a new extreme: that of a suspect body, a source of contagion, whose very touch is questionable. Albeit Jaaware focuses on the phenomenology of touch and brings it outside the boundaries of caste studies, and even beyond India, his investigation of the codes of sociality is important to emphasize the structure that touch works... (More)
This chapter focuses on the dominantly gendered house-help in India: the cooks, cleaners, and maids during the pandemic-triggered lockdowns in Delhi and its metropolitan areas. Even if we are scared to enter people's homes, we have to come out to work to sustain our lives. The case studies of these three women point to the precarity and 'unrepresentability' which turn the previously invisible figure of the maid to a new extreme: that of a suspect body, a source of contagion, whose very touch is questionable. Albeit Jaaware focuses on the phenomenology of touch and brings it outside the boundaries of caste studies, and even beyond India, his investigation of the codes of sociality is important to emphasize the structure that touch works on, enabling a value that is good or bad in different contexts. The experiences of the three women around Delhi’s extended metropolitan spaces point to the discourse of what Francoise Kral calls “social invisibility”.
(Less)
- author
- Ghosh, Amrita LU
- organization
- publishing date
- 2022
- type
- Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding
- publication status
- published
- subject
- host publication
- COVID-19 Assemblages : Queer and Feminist Ethnographies from South Asia - Queer and Feminist Ethnographies from South Asia
- pages
- 9 pages
- publisher
- Taylor & Francis
- external identifiers
-
- scopus:85153135182
- ISBN
- 9780367688202
- 9781000547474
- DOI
- 10.4324/9781003262251-6
- language
- English
- LU publication?
- yes
- id
- c3e426be-baaf-408e-aa37-5b56de4b4223
- date added to LUP
- 2023-07-21 11:37:55
- date last changed
- 2024-04-05 21:30:48
@inbook{c3e426be-baaf-408e-aa37-5b56de4b4223,
abstract = {{<p>This chapter focuses on the dominantly gendered house-help in India: the cooks, cleaners, and maids during the pandemic-triggered lockdowns in Delhi and its metropolitan areas. Even if we are scared to enter people's homes, we have to come out to work to sustain our lives. The case studies of these three women point to the precarity and 'unrepresentability' which turn the previously invisible figure of the maid to a new extreme: that of a suspect body, a source of contagion, whose very touch is questionable. Albeit Jaaware focuses on the phenomenology of touch and brings it outside the boundaries of caste studies, and even beyond India, his investigation of the codes of sociality is important to emphasize the structure that touch works on, enabling a value that is good or bad in different contexts. The experiences of the three women around Delhi’s extended metropolitan spaces point to the discourse of what Francoise Kral calls “social invisibility”.</p>}},
author = {{Ghosh, Amrita}},
booktitle = {{COVID-19 Assemblages : Queer and Feminist Ethnographies from South Asia}},
isbn = {{9780367688202}},
language = {{eng}},
pages = {{25--33}},
publisher = {{Taylor & Francis}},
title = {{HOUSEMAIDS AND THE HAPTIC CODE DURING COVID TIMES}},
url = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9781003262251-6}},
doi = {{10.4324/9781003262251-6}},
year = {{2022}},
}