1 Articles Global Media Journal – Indian Edition/ISSN 2249-5835 Sponsored by the University of Calcutta/ www.caluniv.ac.in Summer Issue / June 2012 Vol. 3/No.1 PROBING THE PROBLEMATICS OF GENDER AND SEXUALITY: AN INTERCULTURAL APPROACH TO CRITICAL DISCOURSES ON BODY IN THE COLONIAL BENGALI MAGAZINE NARA-NAREE Sutanuka Banerjee Research scholar and Erasmus Mundus 'Mobility for Life' fellow Departamento de Igualdad y Genero (Gender Studies Department) Universidad de Malaga (UMA) Campus de Teatinos, 29071 Málaga -EspañaUniversidad de Málaga, Spain Website: http://www.uma.es Email: sutanukabanerjee@yahoo.com Abstract:The construction of body in India is an ambiguous discursive process and this paper attempts to answer the following key questions clinched in the colonial monthly Bengali magazineNara-Naree[Man- Woman]:What was the relationship of knowledge, power and sexuality among genders in colonial India? How was gender difference constituted in colonial Bengal? How did cloth definethe disparity between nature and culture?Howwere the objects of consciousness regarding genders developed in social contexts?How didthesurveillance and control over the body construct the “ideal sexual behavior”? How were the paradigms of health, psychology, nature, culture, science, morality, modernity, tradition and history integrated into the gender framework which assert the reconstruction of femininities, masculinities and sexualities?How did the rhetoric of body and sexuality in colonial Bengal become contested site of discourses as well as a device to construct a national and cultural identity? How did body become a toolof control and a territory for inscribing critical observations,thecontent to be evaluated and a device to reform the structure and boundary between imperial and nationalbinaries? How did the subcultures and transgender identities form new sexual attitudes subverting the homogeneous and hegemonic hierarchy in the east-west relations and transnational settings? Keywords: sexual identity, body politics, culture, cloth, east-west dialectics, hegemonic norms, subversion Introduction Nature-nurture debate and conceptualization of gender and sexuality are part of the broader spectrum where culture is posed as an antithesis to nature and sexual values are conceived as important components of all cultures, though societies may differ widely in attributing meanings to sex, sexual identity and sexual permissiveness. Despite their infinite variety within each culture, some broad generalities can be identified, and these commonalities and differences in sexual behaviors are determined by cultural and psychological contexts and engagement in social comparison and dialogue: Every culture […] is engaged in the process of generating and sustaining systems of meaningful forms (symbols, artifacts, etc.) […] every culture implicitly recognizes and asserts a distinction between the operation of nature and the operation of culture […] the distinctiveness of culture rests precisely on the fact that it can […] transcend natural conditions and turn them to its purposes. Thus culture (i.e every culture) at some level of awareness asserts itself to be not only distinct from but superior to nature […] it is always culture‘s project to subsume and transcend nature. (Ortner, 1974, p. 72)