“Arondekar crafts a devoutly historical and methodologically steady approach to a diverse range of texts (literature, government reports, legal cases, pornographic manuals). Her strong theoretical scaffolding brings these objects together effectively, tightly cross-hatching them through propositions on writing an intelligible history of sexuality. The result is an intervention of scholarly significance that asks us to rethink what it means to ‘do history’ in queer theory, colonial studies, South Asian history, gender studies, and literary and cultural theory.” — Bishnupriya Ghosh, GLQ
“Arondekar’s For the Record is a superb first book that asks how and why scholars of sexuality seek its truth in the historical archive. . . . Written from the perspective of a literary critic, Arondekar’s volume is likely to engage the literary and the nonliterary reader alike.” — Ruby Lal, Feminist Studies,
“Following Ann Stoler, and extending as well as illustrating her thesis with very relevant and illuminating examples, Arondekar argues that the context from which traces of sexuality emerge is as (if not more) important as the content of the traces. . . . This book makes for demanding but rewarding reading. . . . Each chapter is ‘whole’ on its own, and each relies on different kinds of archives (bureaucratic, legal, newspaper and literary, to name a few) to make its case. It is precisely the centrality of archive (state, institutional or literary) to academic study, and its mobilization for political causes, that magnifies the dangers of reading it uncritically, and this work goes a long way in facilitating critical readings such that it becomes a subject in its own right.” — Devika Sethi, The Book Review
“In the wake of this book, scholars of South Asian studies and sexuality studies will be forced to rethink our assumptions about what we are looking for when we search for archival evidence about sexuality and, indeed, to pay closer attention to the relationships that undergird the constitution of particular archival sites. . . . . Perhaps appropriately, given Arondekar’s emphasis on the process of interpretation, For the Record is not always easy on its readers. But for those who persevere, the book offers new insights not only about sexuality, but about the very process by which we write with, and through, the colonial archive.” — Mytheli Sreenivas, Journal of Asian Studies
“This book is innovative in its intellectual scope and in its theoretical contributions and will surely influence the field of sexuality studies broadly. . . . This elegantly written text is thoughtfully informed by the fields of feminist and queer studies, as well as the historiographical schools of subaltern and postcolonial studies, and will be of interest to scholars and students interested in these approaches, as well as to those interested in the study of South Asia and its role in empire more generally.” — Rachel Berger, History: Reviews of New Books
“This illuminating text forces the reader to ask further questions about sexuality and empire. . . . [A] compelling read for anyone interested in Cultural Studies, Subaltern Studies, or Queer Studies.”
— Jenell Morrow, Women’s Studies
“This is a book of enormous importance to scholars of sexuality studies and colonial studies, particularly those of us who work with textual archives. It is a diagnosis and a provocation, particularly to anthropologists, historians, legal thinkers, and those working in archives, official or otherwise.” — Durba Ghosh, H-Net Reviews
“For the Record is an interesting resource for the study of colonial archives containing fresh ideas to approach the subject of sexuality in colonial India. I have enjoyed the narrative journey in the past of colonial India, and I feel that the book will be useful for scholars of colonial history, sexuality, queer studies and law. It is particularly important for all those interested in exploring archival methodologies and histories.”
— Nadia Siddiqui, South Asia
“For the Record is a deft, at times dazzling, archival-based critical reading of the South Asian archives. Anjali Arondekar seeks not the lost objects of sexuality, but the colonial compulsions and disciplines that conjure their appearance and disappearance across time and space. In doing so, For the Record turns sexuality studies on its head with the breathtaking elegance of a master historian and reader.” — Elizabeth A. Povinelli, author of The Empire of Love: Toward a Theory of Intimacy, Genealogy, and Carnality
“In situating sexuality at the heart of the colonial archive, Anjali Arondekar in For the Record brilliantly magnifies the dynamics of recovery and occlusion, desire and emptiness, that attend any archival project. Arondekar inquires specifically into anthropology, law, literature, and pornography in British India, not only contributing to our understanding of the ways the colonial apparatus made sex visible but also pushing forward into questions of what the postcolonial politics of that visibility might now entail. She both quotes Derrida's oblique footnote and makes it urgent: ‘The question of a politics of the archive is our permanent orientation here.’” — Carolyn Dinshaw, author of Getting Medieval: Sexualities and Communities, Pre- and Postmodern
“This engaging and inventive book is not a typical critique of the colonial archive: it depends on the colonial record even as it exposes its limits. This is a crisp and intelligent study that provides both an accounting of the traces of sexuality in colonial India and an excursus on the writing of such a history.” — Mrinalini Sinha, author of Specters of Mother India: The Global Restructuring of an Empire