'Bodies beyond Binaries' advances the historiographical debate around the body in colonial and postcolonial Asia. Opening new research avenues that go beyond the binaries that have sometimes permeated previous scholarly contributions, this book explores not just the direct colonial encounter, but also wider global interconnections and flows involved in the making of knowledge, cultural constructions, and ‘techniques’ of the body.
Throughout the volume, critical concepts such as gender, sexuality, race, class, caste, and religion intersect and dialogue with supposedly binary categories of corporeality such as ruled and unruly, emotional and trained, mobile and confined, and respectable and deviant. Problematized and transcended, these categories reveal their ambiguous and malleable nature.
Bringing together a range of contributions from established and emerging scholars working on different Asian regional and transregional foci, 'Bodies beyond Binaries' offers insights that are not simply relevant across Asia and within colonial settings, but also question Western-centric and culturally essentialist perspectives on the history of the body.

Kate Imy is a screenwriter and historian of the British Empire in Asia at Texas Woman’s University.

Teresa Segura-Garcia is a Tenure-track Professor of Modern South Asian History at Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona.

Elena Valdameri is a historian of modern South Asia at the Professorship for the History of the Modern World, ETH Zurich.

Erica Wald is a Senior Lecturer in modern history at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her research focuses on the social, cultural and military history of colonial India.

Table of Contents; Unframing the Binary: Introducing Bodies Beyond Binaries - Kate Imy, Teresa Segura-Garcia, Elena Valdameri and Erica Wald; Part 1: Ruled and Unruly; Chapter 1. Trans without Borders: Castration and the Politics of Historical Knowledge - Howard Chiang; Chapter 2. Embodiment and Biomedical Authority in South Asia: Reading Objectification and Subversion in the Colonial Clinic - Samiksha Sehrawat; Chapter 3. The Body of the Burmese Muslim - Chie Ikeya; Part 2: Emotional and Trained; Chapter 4. Bodies, Emotions, Labour. The Jamia Millia Islamia and the New Education Movement -Margrit Pernau; Chapter 5. A Healthy Body for a Healthy Mind? The Corporal Impact of Student Mobility from and Towards Indochina, 1900-1945 - Sara Legrandjacques; Chapter 6. Wrestling for the Humankind of the Future: Aurobindo Ghose’s and Mirra Alfassa’s Politics of Physical Education in Pondicherry - Julia Hauser; Part 3: Mobility and Confinement; Chapter 7. Masculinity on the Move from Barcelona to Bombay: The Men of the Catalan Bourgeoisie and their Bodily Encounters in Colonial India - Teresa Segura-Garcia; Chapter 8. Purdah, National Degeneration, and Pelvic Politics: Women’s Physical Exercise in Colonial India, c. 1900–1947 - Elena Valdameri; Chapter 9. Captive Bodies: Soldier and Civilian Internment in the Japanese Occupation of Malaya and Singapore, 1942-1945 - Kate Imy; Part 4: Respectability and Deviancy; Chapter 10. Pigsticking: the ‘Noble’ Indian Boar and Colonial Constructions of Elite Masculinity - Erica Wald; Chapter 11. The Many Lives of the European ‘vagrant’ in colonial Singapore, c. 1890-1940 - Zhi Qing Denise Lim; Chapter 12. Exhibiting Civilization. The Comité Revolucionario Filipino and the Portraits of Filipino Bodies and Minds, 1898-1899 - Laura Diaz-Esteve; Afterword - Willemijn Ruberg; Bibliography; About the Authors; Index