Abundance

“In this beautifully argued book, Anjali Arondekar challenges not only recuperative but also reparative readings of archives that modulate between loss and discovery. By asking what kinds of efflorescence might be encountered by suspending melancholic and revelatory approaches to the historical, Abundance rejects the marshalling of global South histories of sexuality as radical alterity and demonstrates how the geopolitical can function other than as a hollow citational gesture that sutures the hegemony of Euro-American queer theories. While the analysis in Abundance seals Arondekar’s status as a trenchant theorist of epistemology, the supple and voluptuous writing seeps with pleasure.” - Jasbir K. Puar, author of The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability

“By shifting our attention from the recuperation of sexuality as loss to understanding it as a site of abundance, Anjali Arondekar forces a reckoning with the knowledges of subaltern groups in the global South. Abundance will blow a wide hole in South Asian historiography as well as sexuality studies in the United States.” - Indrani Chatterjee, author of Forgotten Friends: Monks, Marriages, and Memories of Northeast India

"With her brilliantly conceived Abundance: Sexuality’s History, Professor Anjali Arondekar . . . has reset the bar very high, with one of the best, richest and most important books of Indian historiography ever written. It’s a huge achievement, with even huger implications for how we assess and think about our collective past." - Vivek Menezes, O Heraldo

"It is one of the most challenging and gratifying books to have emerged from queer theory in recent years. Perhaps the title says it all: Abundance: Sexuality’s History hides the place of the West because it has been everywhere and nowhere in the social lives of sexual dissent." - Howard Chiang, Journal of the History of Sexuality

"[Abundance] offer[s] new insights into how to engage with history and archives." - Tanvir Alim, Literature & History

"Abundance is a deeply powerful book. . . . Abundance is also poignant, necessarily personal-political in the feminist sense, and hence, inspiring." - Deepra Dandekar, Nidan

"What Arondekar is offering us . . . is not just a fun little colloquialism, but an episteme shift." - Namrata Verghese, QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking

"Arondekar upends all we know and practice when it comes to reading histories of sexuality in both a nuanced and refreshing way." - Sean A. Weaver, South Asian Review

"Arondekar lends an incredibly helpful roadmap for investigating histories of sexuality and postcoloniality within (and beyond) South Asia. . . . Essential reading for scholars of postcolonial, sexuality, and anti-caste studies." - Subhalakshmi Gooptu, GLQ