Sarah Pinto (Tufts University) - The Ethical Monster

The Ethical Monster: Theorizing Ugliness and Gendered Political Subject in India

The idea that the concept of "monster" is unevenly applied to women, men, and transgender people, with implications that enforce gender ideology, is among the many ways we have come to understand ethics and aesthetics as part of systems of power. In many cultural frames, the ugliness of the monster is integral to the very category, narratively explained as cause or consequence or moral failing. While the idea of the monster is widely discussed in feminist and social theory, as is the idea of beauty, far less explored is the idea of ugliness as a moral and political condition on its own terms, that is, other than as the imposition of a particular set of standards or gazes.. Drawing on iterations of the narrative of Surpanakha, a monster (rakshasa) in the Indian epic Ramayana, as well as on Surpanakha's appearances in law and psychological literature on trauma, this paper asks what structural and moral positions are established through ugliness? I will argue that concepts of ugliness that emerge from this and similar narratives at once establish ugliness as punishment and render the ugly or defaced woman as a complex moral actor amid webs of relational demands, including the double binds of kinship and the body politic. Importantly, for Surpanakha, this happens by way of the ugly woman's position as agent in the social order of kinship, not as simply a subjectified victim of violence or impossible gender ideals. At the same time, it establishes the deeply gendered conditions of the very concept of agency.

Sarah Pinto will also lead a discussion seminar with pre-circulated readings on TUESDAY September 16, 9:30-11 am in Peterson Hall 116 
(please note the room change from LEA 738 for this seminar)