Disgust for the sexual: the emotional side of obscenity law in India

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article traces the judicial discourse in obscenity cases in (colonial and postcolonial) India (1860–2015). I demonstrate that law emerges as an affective site that mobilises the emotions of disgust (towards sex) and fear (of transgressive sexualities) to strengthen the dominant (hetero)normative sexual order. In this landscape of emotional adjudication, the ‘sexual’ invariably comes under erasure unless it meets the ‘community standard’ of honourable love.